The Surprising Connection Between Atari Serial Ports and Modern-Day USB

Do you remember the iconic Atari computers from the 80s? They were revolutionary for their time and paved the way for modern-day computing. However, did you know that there’s a surprising connection between the Atari serial port and the ubiquitous USB ports we use today?

Back in the day, Atari computers used a serial port called SIO (Serial Input/Output) to connect to peripherals like floppy disk drives, modems, and printers. The port itself was called the “Serial Port', but I'm sticking to referring to the whole  system as "The SIO” for convenience.  

The SIO port was designed by Joe Decuir, a brilliant engineer who played a pivotal role in shaping the world of personal computing.  Unlike other systems at the time, the SIO was “smart" and could recognize various peripherals daisy-chained together to the computer.

With a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington, Joe Decuir was a principle engineer at Atari from 1975 through 1978. While he worked at Atari, he helped design the Atari 2600, and of course, he developed the serial input/output system for the Atari 400 and Atari 800 computers. Following his years at Atari, he worked for Amiga Corporation, where he helped design the Amiga computer - and then for companies such as Apple, Silicon Graphics, and Hewlett-Packard.

So, let's jump to the 1990s when a group of companies, such as Intel, Microsoft, and IBM, were working together to develop a new standard for connecting peripherals to computers. The goal was to create a technology that was faster, more flexible, and easier to use than the existing serial and parallel ports. The result was the Universal Serial Bus, or USB, which is now an industry-standard interface used by billions of devices worldwide.

But what does this have to do with the Atari serial port? Well, it turns out that the design of the USB protocol was heavily influenced by Joe Decuir’s work on the SIO port. In fact, Decuir is often credited as a major contributor to the development of USB.

As mentioned previously, the SIO port was way ahead of its time and provided many of the same features that we now take for granted with USB, such as plug-and-play connectivity and support for a wide range of peripherals. It even had its own version of a device driver model, allowing peripherals to be automatically recognized and configured by the computer. In many cases, this meant that the peripherals themselves had to be smart, to communicate with the computer; generally using a MOS 6507 chip and associated coding.

In conclusion, the Atari serial port played a crucial role in shaping the world of computing as we know it today. So the next time you plug in a USB device, remember that you owe a debt of gratitude to the groundbreaking work of Joe Decuir and the Atari SIO port.

Remembering my first computer

The Atari 400

Image: Evan-Amos CC BY-SA 3.0

Once upon a time, in the late 1970s, Atari was a dominant player in the video game industry, but they had aspirations to expand beyond just gaming. They wanted to create a personal computer that could compete with the likes of Apple and Commodore.

In 1979, Atari introduced the Atari 400, their first attempt at a personal computer. The Atari 400 was a sleek and compact machine with a unique design that set it apart from its competitors. It had a built-in keyboard and a cartridge slot for games and other software.

The Atari 400 was powered by a custom 6502 processor and had 8 kilobytes of RAM. It also had a built-in graphics and sound chip that allowed it to display colorful graphics and produce high-quality sound.

Despite its impressive features, the Atari 400 was not a commercial success. One of the main reasons for this was its membrane keyboard, which was not very responsive and made typing a frustrating experience. In addition, the computer was marketed mainly as a gaming machine, which limited its appeal to a broader audience.

Despite its limited success, the Atari 400 paved the way for Atari's later personal computers, such as the Atari 800 and the Atari ST. These machines were more powerful and more successful than the Atari 400, but they owe their existence to the pioneering work done by the Atari 400 team.

Today, the Atari 400 is a cherished artifact of computing history, and many enthusiasts still enjoy tinkering with and collecting these early machines. They serve as a reminder of the early days of personal computing and the pioneering work done by companies like Atari to bring computers into the mainstream.

I am in the wrong business

TL;DR - wherein the Fortnite fiasco teaches me how much my marketing sucks.

That whole Fortnite black hole experience was a bit disheartening.

I felt bad for the people like Rowan, Adrian, and Shae that were waiting for the new season and having to sit through all of that, of course. However, I'm not that into the game, so that was not what was on my mind during a lot of it.

We were all sitting there in the living room, watching the black hole on the PS4/television, or playing the mini-game that came up with the use of the Konami code. Meanwhile, during a large part of the outage, Shae and Rowan were on their phones, trying to get more information about what was going on and following the streams of various YouTubers.

Holy Crap. I'm mostly following the ones that Shae is watching because I'm sitting by her on the love seat and massaging her feet. This one that she is watching is getting many hundreds of thousands of views, a quarter-million likes, and a metric shit-ton of new subscribers - all things that that particular YouTuber said was totally unusual, and that he normally got a few hundred to a few thousand viewers during his streams.

All of this for, in essence, nothing. He was streaming the exact same thing that was on our TV, with a four to five-second delay to boot. No new information, no details of what was going on. He was passing on some miscellaneous information that people chatting on his channel were saying, but that was about it. There was a small skit or two. He was also updating the info on his screen for newcomers to his channel, so that was nice.

Yet there he was having almost constant donations of $4, $10, and $25 streaming across his feed. There was even one for $500. All for basically giving

us the same available information that we were getting by having the PS4 turned on in our living room. Just to be clear, this isn't a dig at him. He was very entertaining, did the best that he could with the information that was available, and toughed things out for many hours.

It did, however; make me realize how much I suck at marketing. Shae and I both have stores where various things that we have personally designed are available. Tee shirts, mugs, hoodies, leggings, wall art, pillows, etc.

We have my fixed income from the military disability to rely on for our monthly expenses. With the bankruptcy, there is pretty much no discretionary income. This is bad in most months, but even worse the last two months, where due to broken air-conditioning and extremely hot weather here in South Texas, our power bill has totaled more than $800 over the two month period.

So we have these stores, and even though I get hundreds of likes, favorites, pins, and comments or whatnot per month, we struggle to come up with one sale per month. Considering the fact that I only make about $4-$6 in profit per sale, that doesn't even pay for the cost of keeping my store open, which is $30 per month for the website.

Ah well. It's been like this for years, and I don't see it changing in the future. I just wanted to rant for a little bit after watching someone bringing in many thousands of dollars streaming something I was watching on my own television.

Christians are whining about all the pro-choice posts

I've not really brought religion into this whole anti-abortion legislation commentary, although it needs to be brought up, since it is the conservative Christians that are trying to force their strictures onto the American people as a whole.

You can keep quoting chapter and verse from your book of near-infinite contradictions written by bronze age goatherds if that is your wont. That is your prerogative, and no one is trying to stop you. However, you do not get to decide how other American citizens run their life or make their decisions. Take some time and learn how things actually work. A zygote is not a human being.

Listen, your holy book has a significant proportion of its adherents believing that the Earth is flat, and that somehow the belief that it is a globe is a conspiracy by organizations like NASA, when globes have been in existence for centuries.

Your holy book has a significant proportion of it's adherents believing that the Earth is 6,000-10,000 years old. That is as large of an error as telling people that the distance across the United States is 17 feet.  Not even 6 yards across the entire contiguous United States.

Believe what you want, when you want, but do not attempt to force your beliefs on other people that know better.

Find Your Option at The Wits End

Things I have learned

Creating a multi-segment gradient in GIMP