I appreciate toslink because it's an entire industry standard created purely because optical fiber is cool
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@Felthry@awoo.space Even though I have never actually used a toslink connection I still kind of want it to hang around for just that reason.
@LilFluff agreed. it's not anything special for its capabilities, but it's kind of a symbol of an era where manufacturers were trying to stick every fancy new idea into their technologies.
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@Felthry@awoo.space And it was the one common consumer optical connection. Even for things like high speed computer networking optical isn't all that common (suddenly remembering home remodeling show from the 90s where they ran a few strands of fiber optic cable around to all four walls of a home office for future proofing)
@LilFluff not that it's a good optical standard. It uses LEDs instead of laser diodes, which limits the speed immensely--cat5e beats it in bandwidth, i believe--and it's made of thick plastic, which, while it does make it more flexible than most optical fiber cable, also limits its maximum length quite severely.
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@Felthry@awoo.space I seem to recall the Technology Connections Guy's summary was, "It has no real advantage over its non-optical competitors and design decisions that limit its optical abilities, but it's optical and therefor it's cool."
I think I had a portable CD player with it, which could have been nice during the short period when I was using minidisc only I think I'd misplaced it by then. ponders Hmm, I wonder if the minidisc player came with a cable, maybe I did have a toslink cable.
