Reply to post: Re: Ridiculous

Hackers waste Xbox One, PS4, MacBook, Pixel, with USB zapper

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Ridiculous

MIDI is optically isolated, and its cousin DMX, which is used in a similar manner but for lighting and other stage effects. Your point stands, though - I haven't seen it built into a PC since the Atari ST. The common approach on PCs was to have a MIDI break-out box attached to the game port.

For that matter, IrDA is optically isolated, but again, it's been almost entirely supplanted by BlueTooth, and hasn't been common since the old Nokia days - when people only ever seemed to use it for playing two-player Snake.

Thunderbolt started off as 'LightPeak', with the intention of using fibre optic interconnects. However, a copper cable solution was cheaper, and also perhaps the thinking was that consumers would find power delivery more useful than long fibre optic lengths.

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