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"No machines being built today currently use ADB." Actually, at least the Titanium Powerbooks (2002-3) still used ADB for the internal trackpad, and I'm pretty sure the Aluminum Powerbooks and iBooks still do as well. Anyone have one of these that can do a verbose boot to check? -- Kaszeta 15:02, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
"For instance, all keyboards were set to $2, and all mice to $3."
"Given that all keyboards were on $3..."
Clarification, please? -- Ntg 02:56, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)-ntg-- 4.35.128.173 02:44, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The old Apple documentation used the dollar sign ($) to indicate hexadecimal (base 16) numbers (see the entry on Hexadecimal). I believe the current programming convention is to use "0x" as the prefix for hex numbers. The phrase
in question is indicating the default addresses ADB assigned to different devices. Hope this helps.
-- K Cundiff —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
65.197.74.25 (
talk) 21:34, 28 February 2006
The above comment is more than four years old by now, and the article text has changed; but just to avoid potential confusion, a keyboard's default address would be $2 and nothing else. This document from Apple states that the default device ID for "encoded devices" (i.e. keyboards) is $2. ID $3 is "relative-position devices" (mice, trackballs). -- magetoo 10:48, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
To quote the article "As a result, the system was not hot swappable, although this could have been implemented very easily using the PSW had they thought about this case" - what exactly is the evidence that this possibility was not considered? ThomasHarte 15:35, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Adding to this speculation the Apple Developer Note for the Macintosh PowerBook G3 Series [1] computer (commonly called the Wallstreet) states:
suggesting that in the latter implimentations of ADB this issue was resolved. Does anyone have more information on this? -- scott 05:24, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
USB is also still not all that safe to put in when a system is active. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.171.59.199 ( talk • contribs) 16:10, 22 December 2006 (UTC-7)
no plug is safe to plug-in while a system is running technically speaking, as it will cause static. (there is always a potential of frying a controller chip) Markthemac ( talk) 22:25, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
that's right they are S-Video compatible, it always was a cheap and easy plug to produce on a mass scale. Markthemac ( talk) 22:30, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
From the article:
This seems to imply that internal keyboards still use the ADB protocol. Is that actually the case, or did both keyboard and trackpads switch over to USB? — lensovet– talk – 21:06, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
that way apple saved cost to write a new driver for every single keyboard type, USB was a pretty bad standard for keyboards when Apple first started using it (USB was Aka Unused Serial Bus, apple hacked around an unused standard to get a unified keyboard driver functional which also worked on older non-usb hardware) Markthemac ( talk) 22:35, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Quoting a paragraph that I find confusing:
What does this even mean? "a single wire had enough bandwidth"? What does bandwidth mean in the context of a clock signal? What bandwidth does a wire have? (What is the airspeed of an unladen swallow?) What the heck does "[decoding] the clock and data" mean here?
I suggest it should read something like "Wozniak decided that a separate wire for a clock signal was not necessary, and it made economical sense to leave it out". And if someone knows the actual details it could be added to the "communication" section. -- magetoo 11:05, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Bandwidth (signal processing) is the range of frequencies found in a signal. Bandwidth of a wire (or other signal carrier) may be considered the range of frequencies that pass though it. The process of decoding signals from a carrier involves separating the frequencies. You could read the Wiki article on the confusing term… but I think your rewrite may be a better baseline for adding details. Potatoswatter ( talk) 16:37, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I removed this paragraph and just referred to the article on self-clocking signals. Intellec7 ( talk) 16:42, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
The article claims ("as the story goes") that Steve Wozniak "went away for a month, and came back with ADB". Even without the stuff I'm going to talk about below, this story seems a bit too pat.
The patent section of the article lists a number of patents associated with ADB, none of which have Steve's name on them.
What brought this to my attention was the fact that I was at a product demonstration at an apple office in the 90s in which the presenter pointed out a member of the audience and said "we are honored to have the inventor of ADB here today." and it wasn't Steve Wozniak. I went and spoke to the gentleman (I believe Michael Clark) afterwards, who confirmed that he had invented the protocol and mentioned that apple only had the license to use it for personal computers. When I asked what else you would use it for, he said that he had licensed it to the navy for use on submarines where communications links needed to be made without breaching a hull or internal bulkhead.
I'm not going to update the article based on my personal anecdote from 20 years ago, but I've been looking for more confirmation and found a couple links that I may use to edit the article later.
A mailing list archive from 1999 has Michael's CV making the claim that he invented ADB. http://www.eyetap.org/wearables/wear-hard/19996632.html
The apple fritter wiki has an article where someone quotes an email allegedly coming from Michael where he also makes the claim to have invented ADB along with some more specific details. http://www.applefritter.com/?q=node/294
I can find nothing about the submarine thing, maybe he wasn't supposed to tell that story. Mkanoap ( talk) 14:45, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
I clarified that ADB was controlled by Apple. This is important context to understand, both about the bus itself, and the resulting marketplace for peripherals. It also helps explain why a good standard was ignored by everyone but NeXT. Please do not softball this aspect. ( nop ( talk) 17:27, 27 April 2017 (UTC)).
This article seems to heavily imply that ADB and the Mac's serial ports are one in the same. I'm not expert, but I think clarification (especially from someone much more knowledgeable than I) needs to be made. Either ADB and the mini-din serial /are/ different physical implementations of ADB, or they're completely separate. I know the one example posted as an exception to input devices, the Global Village modem, at least the two I had, used the Mac serial, NOT ADB.
There are adapters to use DB-9 serial devices on Mac serial ports - I've never once seen an adapter to use a PC serial mouse on an ADB bus, however. I grew up with these Macs, ADB, and mini-din serial ports.
I believe there is a serious fundamental misunderstanding of the two technologies (either by the authoring community, or myself, though I'm pretty sure I'm right here) and that the entire wiki article needs to be completely re-authored as many of the suppositions in this article are based on ADB and Mac serial being one in the same. 24.173.150.130 ( talk) 13:37, 3 August 2023 (UTC)