Net Tech Computers

Do older computers have USB ports? If not, why?
Computers prior to 1998 didn’t have USB. It didn’t exist. The hardware and OS software couldn’t support USB.

Windows 98 was the one of first OSes that had USB support out of the box, it wasn’t great then, but it had it. You could buy an add-on card that added USB ports, which was possible on Desktop Pcs of the era.

On the Mac Side, 1998’s G3 Mac had USB, as it replaced many Apple only connectors, and a few bulky old ones.

As for what they had..

This PC is after 1998, but the expected “basics” for a pre 98 PC are all here. Also Prior to the some time in the 90s the colours for each connector was not common.

At some point, every connector, baring the keyboard, was at some point controlled by an Add-on card. It was very common to see a “Video card” similar to most modern Gaming PCs are today with GPU.

There was additional connections such as SCSI, which was common to PC and Macs. (The Mac G3 kind of killed it.) Laptops usually had a few extra connectors that USB also replaced.