VGA has five years to live

[BigDumbDinosaur]

commodorejohn wrote:

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

It's been 6-1/2 years since this was posted and VGA is still going strong.

Clearly people haven't gotten the memo! We must badger them into abandoning working solutions for newer ones! Is VGA even getting security patches anymore!?

I recall when the "universal" serial bus was developed in the mid-1990s. The people who invested in USB proclaimed TIA-232 (aka RS-232) dead, obsolete, useless, etc., and why would anyone want to continue with an obsolete standard. It was thought that within a few years TIA-232 hardware would be discontinued by all manufacturers and the standard would be relegated to the same museum housing Friden Flexowriters, magnetic drum storage devices and band printers. After all, EIA RS-232, as it was formally known at inception, was developed four years before the Beatles visited the USA. Even the Wikipedia article about TIA-232 exhibits this "it's old, so it must be obsolete" bias (plus the article makes some incorrect assertions in subtle support of the obsolescence angle).

Despite all that, TIA-232 is still in widespread use, and based upon what I see as I go around my daily business, will likely be around when my grandson has retired (he's got about 44 years to go). It's hard to say how long VGA will be around, but I suspect it will be in use when I'm pushing daisies. An instructor of mine opined long ago that new technology isn't necessarily better technology. My nearly 50 years of activity with computers and electronics affirms that opinion.

[Oneironaut]

You know what else is still around?.... PS2 keyboards!
Who woulda thunk it??

Apparently, gamers use these, so the PS2 port is present on almost all high end mainboards.
For this reason, they ere are still many sources, and companies are making these new.

For these reasons, I am using both VGA and PS2 and a brand new project I have been working on lately.

Long live Old-School!

[Alarm Siren]

From what I understand, the reason PS/2 keyboards are popular with gamers is down to the protocol and controller architecture. Essentially, with PS/2 the keyboard can push messages to the PC and they get dealt with in an interrupt, whereas USB the keyboard has to be polled by the PC. Anyway, the net result is that PS/2 theoretically has lower latency. Whether this is noticably better I have no idea, but that's the theory.

OT: I too am fond of VGA. Had to build a VGA controller on an FPGA for uni, and it was surprisingly and elegantly simple.

[commodorejohn]

Also I believe there's an issue with the USB keyboard standard where it boneheadedly only supports three keys being pressed simultaneously, which can cause all kinds of devilish mischief in action games with middling-to-large numbers of key-mapped controls. Or at least that was the case back in the WinMe era when I last used a USB keyboard on a PC, no idea if it still is now.

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

Fortunately, things have greatly improved, although I still prefer the picture of a CRT monitor over that of an LCD panel. I guess I'm just an out-of-touch curmudgeon.

Or someone who appreciates proper color contrast and upscaling that isn't an ugly, blurry mess

[BigDumbDinosaur]

commodorejohn wrote:

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

Fortunately, things have greatly improved, although I still prefer the picture of a CRT monitor over that of an LCD panel. I guess I'm just an out-of-touch curmudgeon.

Or someone who appreciates proper color contrast and upscaling that isn't an ugly, blurry mess

That's why I have a plasma TV. LCD color looks washed out to me. Plasma images are like CRT images: contrast is better than LCD, there is no streaking with fast-moving objects, and the colors are rich and accurate (according to my wife—I'm partially colorblind, so my opinion doesn't count). Only thing about large screen plasma units is the power consumption.

[Alarm Siren]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

commodorejohn wrote:

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

Fortunately, things have greatly improved, although I still prefer the picture of a CRT monitor over that of an LCD panel. I guess I'm just an out-of-touch curmudgeon.

Or someone who appreciates proper color contrast and upscaling that isn't an ugly, blurry mess

That's why I have a plasma TV. LCD color looks washed out to me. Plasma images are like CRT images: contrast is better than LCD, there is no streaking with fast-moving objects, and the colors are rich and accurate (according to my wife—I'm partially colorblind, so my opinion doesn't count). Only thing about large screen plasma units is the power consumption.

And the weight. You try hooking a 50" plasma telly off the third shelf in a warehouse, with the customer waiting. And then trying to squeeze it into his old-style Mini.

[whartung]

Oneironaut wrote:

You know what else is still around?.... PS2 keyboards!
Who woulda thunk it??

In theory, we're all using PS/2 keyboards to a degree. Apparently the USB chip used in USB keyboards is, almost universally, the same chip. And that chip has a fallback mode to run PS/2. That's how that PS/2->USB adapter works. No real magic in the adapter, the chip already supports it.

Dunno how the behavior is different, if at all.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Alarm Siren wrote:

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

commodorejohn wrote:

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

Fortunately, things have greatly improved, although I still prefer the picture of a CRT monitor over that of an LCD panel. I guess I'm just an out-of-touch curmudgeon.

Or someone who appreciates proper color contrast and upscaling that isn't an ugly, blurry mess

That's why I have a plasma TV. LCD color looks washed out to me. Plasma images are like CRT images: contrast is better than LCD, there is no streaking with fast-moving objects, and the colors are rich and accurate (according to my wife—I'm partially colorblind, so my opinion doesn't count). Only thing about large screen plasma units is the power consumption.

And the weight. You try hooking a 50" plasma telly off the third shelf in a warehouse, with the customer waiting. And then trying to squeeze it into his old-style Mini.

Yep! They are heavy—a lot of glass in the display panel. I really "enjoyed" myself installing ours. I'm still nursing a sore back from picking up the beast, and that was eight years ago.

[kakemoms]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

Alarm Siren wrote:

And the weight. You try hooking a 50" plasma telly off the third shelf in a warehouse, with the customer waiting. And then trying to squeeze it into his old-style Mini.

Yep! They are heavy—a lot of glass in the display panel. I really "enjoyed" myself installing ours. I'm still nursing a sore back from picking up the beast, and that was eight years ago.

Oh it reminds me of my 46" LCD that I bought 12 years ago! I tried to squeeze it into an Audi A2 (I had at the time). No luck on that one! And it weighted close to 40 kilos! Today its hanging in my basement, and I think it will go with the house if I ever move.

As for VGA; the new LG 55" LCD I bought last year still had VGA and analog input. I even managed to get it to lock onto the output of a Vic-20(!). Its so thin you can almost use it as a blanket - no wonder some people are stealing them so easily.

[TomC]

PS/2 equipment is also used in high-data security environments. When my previous employer sent people to Goldman Sachs in the early 2000s they found that GS policy called for disabling the USB ports on every company system.

I'm still bummed that parallel ports have almost entirely vanished.

[Alarm Siren]

Well, I suppose that makes sense. At a protocol level you can't use PS/2 devices to take information off a computer, whereas a USB keyboard could also emulate a flash drive and copy stuff off when you're not looking. You could still cause some havoc with a PS/2 keyboard that types by itself though.

[cbmeeks]

TomC wrote:

I'm still bummed that parallel ports have almost entirely vanished.

My wife recently won a laser printer (Lexmark) at a work function she had. It was a new printer and not some old one. Really nice one, actually.

I was surprised to see that it had a parallel printer port on it alongside a T-10/100 Ethernet port. So I guess they haven't died 100%.

[ttlworks]

TomC wrote:

GS policy called for disabling the USB ports on every company system.

Back in 2014, I think there was an article in the c't computer magazine about "spying mice"...

IIRC they had noticed by accident, that a certain optical USB mouse (manufactured in China)
had that habit when getting moved over a mouse pad (manufactured in China) which had microscopic "dots" on it,
the mouse "enumerated" itself as a keyboard too, opened a "console window" running in the background on the PC,
then "typed in" the commands for downloading malware from the internet from a location specified by that dot pattern...

They only had noticed, because they had a Linux PC, and the commands "typed" by the mouse were
aimed at Windows PCs.

From the security point of view, having office PCs without USB certainly makes sense...

[BigEd]

Even without USB, note that PS/2 is bidirectional, and your PS/2 keyboard can type anything it likes. It could also possibly type in some code which then exfiltrates information. If the keyboard or mouse had smarts inside and a wifi chip it could even exfiltrate directly, to a vehicle parked outside...

Having said which, Windows can in a corporate environment be very much locked down, as to which programs it will run. The rogue keyboard or mouse might need to compromise an application somehow.

[kakemoms]

Hmm.. there certainly is a market for transparent keyboards. Not as a glass keyboard, but without too much logic inside, so that one can see that it doesn't do things its not supposed to do.

Well, maybe one made of glass would be cooler..