Computer systems: how does USB work?
Self-tutoring about laptops and other devices: the tutor checks behind the scenes about USB.
The other day I saw a laptop with an ethernet port – something I don’t always see on laptops nowadays. I thought it would be a very good feature to have, in some scenarios.
A day later, I arrived at an article that mentions the ethernet-to-USB adapter. I discussed it with my wife; she pointed out that there is USB adaptation available for virtually any type of device. She’d learned this because her new computer at work lacks a card reader and other specialized ports her old one had. Instead, it’s only got three USB-C ports. She’d researched how to access her old resources from those.
The question in my mind was how you can plug any type of input, whether native USB or adapted, into a generic USB port, yet the computer knows what to do with it. I thought this surprising, since I understood the specialized ports of the old days as the way the computer knew what to do with each input.
It turns out, with USB, that autodetection is programmed into the receiving side: it decides what type of device has joined the computer, therefore what to do with the input. This might involve loading specific software into RAM that can process the input as intended.
The elegance and convenience of the USB system might impress someone who recalls all the specialized ports on old computers. Yet, for those caught in between with devices that still need specific ports, there are even multi-adapters that host a couple of different types of card reader, HDMI, and different USB ports as well. Apparently, USB doesn’t leave people out in the cold.
Source:
Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.