Serial port or U.S B for webcam? 1

[Dougpeplow]

I am considering buying an inexpensive webcam. I currently have a small digital camera that works well, downloading through COM2, which I think is a standard RS232 type port. (My PC is a BITZA and I dont know the full origin of some of the component parts!). Two webcams I have seen advertised connect thro a USB (Universal serial bus?). Is this a seperate device/card to the existing COM2 port? Will I have to install addtional h/ware<br>
Thank U<br>
DougPeplow

 

[Neddy]

USB is separate technology from the standard serial ports. If your mainboard hasn't got USB on it, you'll need to buy and install a separate USB card. A word of caution: Windows 95A doesn't support USB, so if your PC's an early build of Win 95 you'll need to get Windows 95B (the disk carries the legend &quot;With USB Support&quot. Also, Windows 98 was intended to be USB-supportive but 98A was so full of bugs that Microsoft had to bring out 98B! Good luck.

 

[Neddy]

USB is separate technology from the standard serial ports. If your mainboard hasn't got USB on it, you'll need to buy and install a separate USB card. A word of caution: Windows 95A doesn't support USB, so if your PC's an early build of Win 95 you'll need to get Windows 95B (the disk carries the legend &quot;With USB Support&quot. Also, Windows 98 was intended to be USB-supportive but 98A was so full of bugs that Microsoft had to bring out 98B! Good luck.

 

[robherc]

FYI:<br>
Serial port max speed: 0.2Mbps<br>
LPT port max speed: 8Mbps (I think...could be more)<br>
USB port max speed: 12Mbps<br>
IEEE 1384 port current max speed: 400Mbps<br>
<br>
Any way you want to do the math; this'll help when selecting peripherals...always go for the USB or FireWire(IEEE 1384) if given the option (plus, they're &quot;hot-swapable&quot;...serial & parallel aren't) <p>-Robherc<br><a href=mailto:robherc@netzero.net>robherc@netzero.net</a><br><a href= shared.freeservers.com/searchmaster.html>SearchMaster Interface...11-in-1</a><br>Wanting to learn Assembler; please e-mail me any tutorials or links for it that are useful to you

 

[Guest_imported]

Actually, Parallel Port technology has a maximum speed of 2Mbps, not 8, and Serial is 115Kbps.

 

[robherc]

Actually; ECP parallel ports run at up to 24Mbps (just read it in my newest edition of Sm@rt Reseller...knew I had that magazine for a reason and I'm not sure; but somewhere I saw a spec for a &quot;super-fast&quot; 230Kbps UART serial port...which is about .22Mbps...anywise; those fairly minor differences don't ver much invalidate my table; though USB 2.0 going @ 288-384Mbps & IEEE 1394 FireWire upping the ante to 800 & 1600Mbps will severely invalidate some of those stats. <p>-Robherc<br><a href=mailto:robherc@netzero.net>robherc@netzero.net</a><br><a href= shared.freeservers.com/searchmaster.html>SearchMaster Interface...11-in-1</a><br>Wanting to learn Assembler; please e-mail me any tutorials or links for it that are useful to you

 

[Dougpeplow]

Gentlemen<br>
Thank U very much - as soon as I power on a webcam I'll join the Debate!!<br>
Rgds Doug

 

[Karl Blessing]

Definitly USB, its hotswapable(you can take it out, and plug it in when you need a free usb port, i mean wouldnt it be a pain to have to remove, and connect a serial everytime you needed something else and besides you need to reboot to get it to use the other thing), also if yer gona do USB, i recomend spending say about 30$ on one of those Self-Powered USB hubs, so that it doesnt take any power away from your Computer's MainBoard(yea if you havent heard, USB Sucks power from the computer), also in most cases USB is pretty fast, and good for a cheap-o camera, of course in the professional area, you'd wana get FireWire.<br>
<br>
<p>Karl<br><a href=mailto:kb244@bellsouth.net>kb244@bellsouth.net</a><br><a href=

http://kb244.8m.com>

</a><br>

 

[Dougpeplow]

Excuse my ignorance - being from the other side of the pond . But if I understand the discussion, a serial port is deemed to be not 'hot swapable'. I interpret this to mean that I shouldn't be able to unplug my modem to use my digital camera without rebooting?. Funnily enough, I have just done that to load my pictures to the web. Do I misunderstand the term 'hot swapable'?<br>
Dougpeplow

 

[Karl Blessing]

are you able to stick it into any other port, without having to reboot, are you able to install drivers for a device and not have to reboot, are you able to immediatly remove an object, then reinsert it and windows imediatly knowing that device was removed or inserted, well you can with USB, i dont remeber Windows ever imediatly saying &quot;you've connected digitial camera&quot; or something like that, the moment you plug it in, also with USB, if it ask for drivers, it loads the drivers, and doesnt even need a reboot.<br>
also with non-windows based devices, running on say a com1 or com2, or something like that, where no drivers are needed, you can plug a serial into a com3 or something liek that and the software itself searches com3, so as long as the device is inactive you can remove it, or if the program itself provide all the support then ya, but not many things can do that now days since they are mainly dependant on the windows API to handle it all, also USB has a much higher transfer rate than serial/parrallel. Of course the 3 main types i can see right now are Serial/Parrallel(slower but reliable), USB (faster, easy as hell, not reliable on mass storage media, anything that has to handle more data than a Zip 100MB drive, shouldnt be recomended for USB, input devices are great for it tho), SCSI (really really fast, expensive, but reliable, requires a SCSI card for PC users, since i've never seen a PC witrh a SCSI port, unless it was a laptop or something), just thought i clear up what i did know from this side of the pond <p>Karl<br><a href=mailto:kb244@bellsouth.net>kb244@bellsouth.net</a><br><a href=

http://kb244.8m.com>

</a><br>