Introduction
The Universal Serial Bus (USB) has been jointly developed as a means of allowing peripheral devices to be more easily added to computers. The idea was to design a new communication interface, which was faster than existing Serial and Parallel ports and simpler to use. Unlike traditional ports USB uses only one IRQ regardless of how many devices are attached and offers true Plug and Play capabilities. The types of devices that currently use USB technology are: Cameras
Monitors
Joysticks
Keyboards
Mice
Modems
Printers
Scanners
Speakers
Storage Devices 
The type A end is for connecting to PC’s and Hubs, while the type B end is used to connect the peripheral devices. The maximum length these cables should be is 15ft. The cable itself consist of 4 wires, 2 of which supply voltage and the remaining 2 supply the data signals. USB FEATURES
The key features of USB are as follows: CONNECTIVITY
Hot swappable
Up to 127 devices can be connected at one time
Connections can be up to 15ft in length (while it is possible to violate the specifications for cables, the increase in length would be minimal, only allowing a few inches at best to be added) EASE OF USE
Standard plugs and ports
No additional cards required in the PC
Automatic configuration
USB is supported by the following Operating Systems
Windows 98
Windows 98SE
Windows Me
Windows 2000
Windows XP (Home & Professional)
Windows 95 (limited support, almost unusable)
Mac OS 8.1 and later SPEED
Up to 12Mbits per second with Version 1.1
Up to 480Mbits per second with Version 2.0
100 times faster than serial com ports SETUP
USB has true plug and play capabilities. This means that there is no need to reboot the Mac or PC when USB devices are connected. The Mac or PC should automatically recognize each new device as it is connected and load the appropriate driver. If no driver is available the user is prompted to install the correct device driver.
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Glossary
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