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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

That sounds more like "Well, it's not as bad as PS2 connector at least."

The worst part is that they already had a good example of a connector you couldn't plug in backwards, was sturdy, hot-pluggable, and could easily accommodate the number of pins they needed: The Gameboy Link Cable.

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PS/2 seems entirely rotationally ambiguous without looking at the pins, or at least seemed so to the younger version of me. It still stands out as the most painful part of computing during my childhood.

PS/2 male connectors have a set of grooves and rotationally asymmetrical rim. I had always been able to plug them in blind on the first try.

And the "top" is usually flat so you can put your thumb on it and push in.

I broke countless keyboards and mice (and not a few motherboards) due to PS2 rotation

PS/2 ports were the most painful? I guess you never used dial-up.

The Gameboy Link Cable is a fine design, but it just reminds me of all if the other fairly decent connectors that Nintendo has developed, implemented, and sold millions of.

I guess the real LPT is to always ask the oldest remaining provider of digital home electronics for advice on these matters.

Heh, you do have to hand it to them for making stuff where your use cases include "Robust and Intuitive enough for a six year old at the playground"

25-pin din parallel port connectors were D-shaped and invented in the 1970s. And there were directional connectors that long predated that.

USB's rectangular is simply a horrible oversight. Comparing it to PS2 is pretty lame. What about comparing it to nearly every other connector out there?

I'm guessing they didn't want to enlarge the serial port to one almost large enough to stick a deck of cards into.

They wouldn't have to. The point is that the D shape was a proven design at the time, and it (or something similar like the HDMI shape) could have been scaled down to USB-A size.

The PS2 plug on my keyboard has a flat surface at the 12 o'clock position which makes it very easy so plug in without looking at the pins.

I needed that info three decades ago...

iirc, the Gameboy Link Cable was physically (though not electrically) compatible with Firewire, USB's main rival, so I can imagine wanting to distance themselves from that.

USB type-B never gave me the same problems as type a, maybe they could have used that everywhere.

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