Today's computers have achieved a relatively broad ease of connection, but to reach this point, several standards, interfaces, ports and connectors were necessary. Many of them have already fallen into disuse, whether due to natural reasons or the adoption of other technologies among hardware manufacturers. However, there is still a healthy number that coexist and compete within the dynamic computing we enjoy today. In this occasion we offer you a gallery of the most important ports and connectors associated with a computer.
I had never had any problem with my own Commodore 64, but being just a kid a little over a decade old, I had the rare opportunity to see one of these systems without its case. As expected, I was very surprised to see how the inside of that computer looked, but when I saw my first 286 I was even more amazed. "What are those...?", I said in disbelief, pointing at the black things sticking out of the green board. It was my first exposure to an ISA port.
Since then they became something very familiar to me, and although nowadays very few systems still use them, I personally believe I will never forget an ISA port. This is just an example of how certain aspects of computing have marked us throughout our lives. Many things are quickly forgotten, but others, no matter how simple they seem, remain there in a corner.
Connectors, ports and sockets. Many of each, ruthless when it comes to contributing to the confusion of the novice user, powerful and weak for multiple reasons, forgotten, resisted, and adopted. Basically, a port symbolizes the expansion capability of a computer, its virtue of going beyond the original design and surpassing its own limits. It is an ancient concept no matter how you look at it, but from the PC era, it reached a level of miniaturization and flexibility never seen before.
In today's gallery we will see some of the most important exponents of ports and connectors. Some of them had a short life, while others still endure today. The number of internal variants is more than significant, so we ask for your understanding in case some version of the ports does not appear here. That said, let's begin.
The Gallery
