Barrel jacks were awesome, they could go in any orientation. The only downside was the many different forms of barrel jack and lack of a standard. My question is: why isn't there a cylindrical USB port? You would be able to rotate it any way you want within 360 degrees!
As a matter of fact, why isn't there a cylindrical power plug? You'd get the benefits of a recessed plug like Type-C (EU) and Type-F (Schuko), you'd get the benefits of reversible plugs like Type-A (North American) and more so as you get 360-degree rotation, and it would be MUCH harder to break/bend compared to two flimsy pins (the UK plug has three thicker pins, but a chunky cylinder would be much more difficult to bend than the pins)
If it was a hollow cylinder (a bit like a vacuum-insulated water bottle), you could feasibly fit some small electronics in it, so things like flush low-power USB chargers and smart home sensors could be made.
The contacts would likely need to be outside the cylinder, similar to the "neutral" pins on Schuko plugs. There would likely need to be some plastic tabs to keep the power bits from touching the non-power bits, and then the socket itself would be able to freely rotate.
Actually, why don't regular sockets freely rotate? Then it would solve all the issues of non-reversible plugs not able to go upside down and reversible plugs not able to go sideways.
Speaking of cylindrical objects, what happened to camcorders? They sound like the most comfortable and easiest way to record videos, with straps and everything. They were compact, portable, and wasn't heavy as all heck.
this is my rant about cylinders, thank you for your time.
those old ps/2 mice and keyboard plugs were annoying as hell. definitely not designed to be easily hot-swapped.
Could they even be hot swapped? I don't remember trying. I remember my dad getting a CD-RW drive with a USB-A connector, I had to reboot to get the computer to recognize it, but that was Windows 95 or 98.
Win 98 was when they started “plug and play”
Some of the ps/2 things were also plug and play but that partly depended on the hardware, and sometimes you had to tell it to go look for it. But rebooting was easier to do. Unless there was an update….
Haha another "great" memory wrapped up in that video.
its a classic, it really is.
They could be, but that wasn't standard behavior. When laptops started to become a thing it was realized that having hot swappable peripherals made too much sense to ignore, so some devices had improved ps/2 ports and controllers that could do that.
I see. I bought my first laptop in 2013 (used), and by then I was pretty ensconced in Linux. That machine didn't have those ports.