13,725 karma · joined August 28, 2011
In my working life I've seen -
at least 3 different ways to do RS-232 on 8p8c
DTE-DCE is always an issue on standard 232, otherwise I wouldn't have so many null modem cables
232 and 3.3v TTL on the same board or assembly
3.3v and 5v TTL on the same board or assembly
Inconsistent labelling.
I'm in my mid 40's and I think there is a reasonable chance something with RS-232 serial timings will outlast me, it'd be nice to make it more foolproof, as its one of a very few interfaces that will work without drivers.
I do think as a matter of standard good design practice we should be putting clamping diodes on debug ports to prevent blowing things up if hit with the wrong voltage,
1. Automatic DCE-DTE detection and an interface which will rewire itself as needed to be the correct way, or you automatically know DCE vs DTE by connector gender.
2. Automatic Voltage Detection - 232 levels, TTL 5v, TTL 3v - and interfaces that are isolated enough to deal with the wrong voltage (clamping diodes or whatever), or different cable sizes for each.
3. Automatic type detection - TTL/RS-232, RS-422, RS-485, or different connector types by each.
Ideally I'd do this on a 8p8c or 10p10c connector, because of ease of making cables, with various resistance values across pins 1-8, or 1-10 to tell you what kind of interface it was.
Windows Phone died because MS didnt do enough to build the app ecosystem, and bailed out too soon. I also feel webOS was a lost opportunity too - in some ways it was just too ambitious for the hardware of its time.
We just got code complete on porting a 30 year old Delphi app to C#, because of all of this.
Even now, our pure Delphi components are performant and wonderful, but hiring people who want to learn or know Delphi is hard, so off to C# we trundle forward.
I might not be a basic practitioner, but as someone who as written serious things in bash and powershell, I can see the allure.
I have called and opened tickets, and I keep hearing it'll be fixed real soon now.