This was one area where some cross-microcomputer standards were actually coming together. You had:
1. RS-232
2. V.22 and V.22bis modems (higher speed wouldn't standardize for a number of years later)
3. Bell System Telephone lines
4. VT-100/ANSI escape sequences
5. XMODEM, then YMODEM and ZMODEM
6. ASCII character set and plain text files
All of which come together to allow a lot of interoperability on this level. This type of standardization didn't really exist for:
1. Floppy drives
2. Hard drives
3. Monitors
4. Keyboards
5. Mice
6. Printers (beyond plain text over a parallel port, and even that wasn't the standard interface on many printers)
Pretty much everything you could attach to a computer except a modem was nonstandard and different between different microcomputers.
This was one area where some cross-microcomputer standards were actually coming together. You had:
1. RS-232
2. V.22 and V.22bis modems (higher speed wouldn't standardize for a number of years later)
3. Bell System Telephone lines
4. VT-100/ANSI escape sequences
5. XMODEM, then YMODEM and ZMODEM
6. ASCII character set and plain text files
All of which come together to allow a lot of interoperability on this level. This type of standardization didn't really exist for:
1. Floppy drives
2. Hard drives
3. Monitors
4. Keyboards
5. Mice
6. Printers (beyond plain text over a parallel port, and even that wasn't the standard interface on many printers)
Pretty much everything you could attach to a computer except a modem was nonstandard and different between different microcomputers.