Gameports

jimmybgood

Member
Oct 12, 2003
110
0
0
I had a new motherboard installed and went to hook up my joystick and there was like no place to plug it in. I had to fill up a pci slot with an old sound card. Looking around, I don't see gameports on new motherboards.

Huh? Are joysticks all USB now?
 

jimmybgood

Member
Oct 12, 2003
110
0
0
Wow, am I an old fossil.

100% of the joysticks abandoned by my tenants attach to game ports.

The motherboard does have a parallel port, only one serial port and a floppy disk controller. I do have a printer that uses the parallel port. I remember having to look hard for a printer without USB. I might use the serial port someday for console access to a server, but I'm kind of surprised that modern computers still need a floppy to update the BIOS.

Are there any PC motherboards that don't need a floppy to flash the BIOS? How do Mac Minis flash the BIOS?
 

Lord Evermore

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
9,558
0
76
You can boot to a CD to flash the BIOS, or even boot to the hard drive if you make a small DOS partition. A floppy drive is just the simplest, most basic way of doing it. You can possibly even do it with a USB memory stick, but it's a bit of a hassle to make a memory stick bootable to DOS. Many mainboard makers even provide Windows-based flash programs now.

It's often considered a more "reliable" way of doing it too, but in fact, the floppy controller isn't even part of the system chipset, it's on the LPC chip, so that's one more device that might fail in the middle of a flash, compared to using an integrated hard drive controller. Not to mention the inherent crappiness of floppy disks. But floppies are portable, cheap, you can usually find a computer to write a floppy with.

Floppies are just a "least common denominator" in terms of how a mainboard maker specifies that you flash the BIOS. Nearly everyone has one, and if you don't, you probably can figure out how to do it without a floppy.

As for gameports, they were slow, chunky, taking up valuable space and used an IRQ, and only a small percentage of people used them. With the advent of USB, and people rushing to get newer joysticks with a faster interface, and "digital" performance (and I don't think the gameport was designed for hotplugging technically), there were even fewer people looking to use a gameport. They lasted a few years, and even still are available on soundcards or at least via a connector cable to some. The number of people desiring one just gets less and less as time goes on. Most devices that use them ought to be worn out or just too grungy to use anyway.
 

N3cr0

Member
Jan 21, 2005
32
0
0
Pretty much everything went over to USB simply because of ease of use and a MUCH easier setup with multiple controllers.
 

soydios

Platinum Member
Mar 12, 2006
2,708
0
0
Most recent Asus motherboards with Gameports:
A8N32-SLI
P5WD2-E

The newer motherboards for the newest generation of processors (M2N32-SLI and P5W-DH) do not have Gameports.
 

dandragonrage

Senior member
Jun 6, 2004
385
0
0
You can flash most motherboards from Windows these days. And yeah, game ports are replaced with USB.
 

Auric

Diamond Member
Oct 11, 1999
9,591
2
71
The mobo may still have a gameport interface to connect a jack (on a bracket). Otherwise USB adapters are available although whether they will work with a particular joystick may depend upon driver availability. I dunno maybe generic profiles will work for simple joysticks. However, USB is host based so does degrade performance. It may not be noticeable on modern machines but it certainly was a few years ago.
 
sale-70-410-exam    | Exam-200-125-pdf    | we-sale-70-410-exam    | hot-sale-70-410-exam    | Latest-exam-700-603-Dumps    | Dumps-98-363-exams-date    | Certs-200-125-date    | Dumps-300-075-exams-date    | hot-sale-book-C8010-726-book    | Hot-Sale-200-310-Exam    | Exam-Description-200-310-dumps?    | hot-sale-book-200-125-book    | Latest-Updated-300-209-Exam    | Dumps-210-260-exams-date    | Download-200-125-Exam-PDF    | Exam-Description-300-101-dumps    | Certs-300-101-date    | Hot-Sale-300-075-Exam    | Latest-exam-200-125-Dumps    | Exam-Description-200-125-dumps    | Latest-Updated-300-075-Exam    | hot-sale-book-210-260-book    | Dumps-200-901-exams-date    | Certs-200-901-date    | Latest-exam-1Z0-062-Dumps    | Hot-Sale-1Z0-062-Exam    | Certs-CSSLP-date    | 100%-Pass-70-383-Exams    | Latest-JN0-360-real-exam-questions    | 100%-Pass-4A0-100-Real-Exam-Questions    | Dumps-300-135-exams-date    | Passed-200-105-Tech-Exams    | Latest-Updated-200-310-Exam    | Download-300-070-Exam-PDF    | Hot-Sale-JN0-360-Exam    | 100%-Pass-JN0-360-Exams    | 100%-Pass-JN0-360-Real-Exam-Questions    | Dumps-JN0-360-exams-date    | Exam-Description-1Z0-876-dumps    | Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps    | Dumps-HPE0-Y53-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-HPE0-Y53-Exam    | 100%-Pass-HPE0-Y53-Real-Exam-Questions    | Pass-4A0-100-Exam    | Latest-4A0-100-Questions    | Dumps-98-365-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-98-365-Exam    | 100%-Pass-VCS-254-Exams    | 2017-Latest-VCS-273-Exam    | Dumps-200-355-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-300-320-Exam    | Pass-300-101-Exam    | 100%-Pass-300-115-Exams    |
http://www.portvapes.co.uk/    | http://www.portvapes.co.uk/    |