Anyone experimenting or developing USB por ted peripheral hardware soon becomes irritated by the need to disconnect and connect the plug in order to re-establish communication with the PC. T... Read more
USB (universal serial bus) was supposed to solve a lot of problems when connecting devices to PCs, but in many ways it’s still a bit of a pain in the plughole. Typically, each new device nee... Read more
Modern PCs rarely have a serial or parallel port any more, to the great regret of anyone who experiments with microcontrollers every now and then. In the old days it was very simple to use t... Read more
Does this sound familiar: you buy a small piece of equipment, such as a programming & debugging interface for a microcontrol-ler, and you have to use a dunky AC wall adapter to supply it... Read more
Life in the 21st century would be almost unbearable without some of the computer peripherals that PC users now look on as essentials — take for example the USB powered teacup warmer; this de... Read more
This circuit switches a printer’s USB connection from a PC to a laptop. What was needed was a method of allowing a laptop to use the printer occasionally while at all other times the printer... Read more
A common problem when an AC mains adapter is used to power a USB device is that the voltage does not match the nominal 5 V specified by the USB standard. The circuit shown here accepts an in... Read more
The Xbox is the well-known Microsoft game computer. The fact that the Xbox is based on PC technology should hardly be surprising, since Microsoft specialises in this computer architecture. I... Read more
Now that we’ve become used to USB you really appreciate the facility to connect or disconnect devices without having to turn the power off first. This was also true for RS232 (but not with L... Read more
In numbers, there are probably more chargers around for NiMH than for Lithium-ion or Lithium-polymer batteries. If you wanted to use the latter you’d have to integrate the charger circuit, m... Read more
