Subj : Re: Looking For Bbs Clien
To   : Nightfox
From : AKAcastor
Date : Fri May 03 2024 12:05:34

 AK> Usually for modem use it's fine, but some other serial devices can be
 AK> thrown off by the added latency of USB.

 N> I've wondered about latency sometimes and have wondered 
 N> why there often isn't something directly connected to 
 N> the bus for things like serial ports & such these days.  
 N> I often see things like USB MIDI adapters, USB headsets 
 N> & microphones, and latency probably does play a role in 
 N> those, but it seems those are good enough for many situations..

It is still possible - you can get PCIe serial (and parallel) interfaces (if you have an available PCIe slot).  It does seem fairly niche these days though.

Most of the USB latency issues seem to be solvable if the interface is smart enough to understand the protocol used, and I think there are USB protocol options to reduce latency as well.  Whether particular devices implement the best solution does seem to be a guessing game.

Another experiment I tried was using a PCIe serial card in a Thunderbolt PCIe enclosure.  PCIe slots in the enclosure are connected to the system via Thunderbolt (USB-C connector) - I don't know the details of how PCIe-over-Thunderbolt works, but it is very low latency.  I did have success using the serial card in the Thunderbolt PCIe enclosure, it's an expensive solution to a simple problem though.  I used this kind of Thunderbolt PCIe enclosure:
https://www.startech.com/en-ca/usb-hubs/tb31pciex16


Chris/akacastor

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 * Origin: Another Millennium - Canada - another.tel (21:1/162)

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