USB It has largely replaced interfaces such as serial ports and parallel ports, and has become commonplace on a wide range of devices. USB connectors have been increasingly replacing other types for battery chargers of portable devices. This section is intended to allow fast identification of USB receptacles (sockets) on equipment. Further diagrams and discussion of plugs and receptacles can be found in USB (Physical) § Connectors. The Universal Serial Bus was developed to simplify and improve the interface between personal computers and peripheral devices, when compared with previously existing standard or ad-hoc proprietary interfaces. From the computer user's perspective, the
Parallel port If no printer port is present at 0x3BC, the second port in the row (0x378) becomes logical parallel port 1 and 0x278 becomes logical parallel port 2 for the BIOS. Sometimes, printer ports are jumpered to share an interrupt despite having their own IO addresses (i.e. only one can be used interrupt-driven at a time). In some cases, the BIOS supports a fourth printer port as well, but the base address for it differs significantly between vendors. Since the reserved entry for a fourth logical printer port in the BIOS Data Area (BDA) is shared with other uses on PS/2