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USB - Universal Serial Bus

(U-S-B)

A bus standard from around 1996 that supports 12Mbit/s data transfer and 127 devices (the 1.1 standard). Printers, scanners, audio output, and many other devices can be used with USB ports. Note that the later Win95 versions have USB support, but the drivers don't always work with all devices. Win98 is supposed to be fully compliant (but even then some computer BIOS versions may not fully support USB). Later Windows versions and most BIOS versions do fully support at least up to the USB 2.0 specification.

The 2.0 version boosted speed to 480 Mbit/s in 2001 and the 3.0 specification just now coming into effect (early 2010) boasts speeds of 4.8 Gbit/s.

USB has the potential to replace both serial and parallel ports (but may not for some time because of all the devices currently available). The small connector typically goes into a device and the larger into the computer when connecting devices (some devices use the large connector as well).

USB Connectors

The USB 3.0 connection looks similar...

 

USB 3.0 Connector

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