Your Next PC: Legacy Free?

[dullard]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
As far as transferring files - that's what networks are for! I can't remember the last time I had to actually put files on a disk in order to transfer them to another computer. scp/nfs/ftp/etc take care of that quite nicely.

My home computers weren't networked until last weekend (and I'm a computer nerd). Do you think every family has every computer networked? Half of the work comptuers aren't connected (many don't have either a modem or NIC). About 1/3rd of the school computers around here aren't networked. Need I go on?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

If my USB card goes out, I can hook up a printer on parallel and still get my reports in on time.

Horrible example. If your parallel goes out, you can always use your usb ports, at least you have multiple. You only have one parallel port. Since when do usb cards "go out" alot anyways?

If my power goes out, a UPS is nice to have hooked up to your serial port.

Or a usb port.

Lost your password? Guess those nice DOS based password deleting things won't work on a USB keyboard - or any of the many other useful DOS tools.

"Legacy USB support" or something like that. Look for it in your bios. The only flaw I see is that sometimes it's not enabled by default and you need a ps2 keyboard to get in. IMO bioses should support usb keyboards 100% without having to emulate them as ps2 to the OS (including mice).

Nothing is easier and cheaper to take a file from computer to computer than the floppy. I've got dozens of blank AOL disks all free in the mail ready to transfer a Word file from home to work. Why would I want to spend several minutes and 25 cents to burn a CD for this? It isn't like you transfer more than 1MB very often.

Bandwidth is free, assuming you don't pay per MB. scp or ftp it to work. A couple keystrokes and it jets across the internet, much nicer than copying it to a floppy and carrying it with you.

Does legacy free mean DVI connections only for the monitor.

I don't think so. vga ports are hot pluggable and pnp, although dvi is definitely nicer. Things will move to dvi eventually, but it's not that big of a deal for most people (who use crappy monitors anyways).

But you cannot come up with anything other than maybe saving up to $1 on your next motherboard in support of legacy free.

Sure I can, but things that I find cool or interesting you find worthless, so I can't expect your type to care. After all, you're the one putting files on floppies when you could just use scp

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: dullard

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
As far as transferring files - that's what networks are for! I can't remember the last time I had to actually put files on a disk in order to transfer them to another computer. scp/nfs/ftp/etc take care of that quite nicely.

My home computers weren't networked until last weekend (and I'm a computer nerd). Do you think every family has every computer networked? Half of the work comptuers aren't connected (many don't have either a modem or NIC). About 1/3rd of the school computers around here aren't networked. Need I go on?

I can understand for "normal people", but I figured everyone here was a big enough nerd to at least have a nic in each computer of theirs and some cat5 between them. Pretty fundamental thing to me, I don't have much use for an un-networked computer.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I need my LPT port and my PS2 ports. I also still use my Serial port sometimes. I have only 1 floppy drive installed between 4 systems. I am glad that i never have to use it

 

[jhu]

if it isn't broken, why fix it? serial and parallel ports still have their uses. i need a serial port to interface to my sparcstation ipc on its initial boot up. and they're so much easier to program for. why should people switch to a usb keyboard/mouse? what advantage do they have over my ps/2 keyboard and mouse? nothing! if anything, using the usb bus uses up more cpu cycles (not that that's as much of an issue as usb speakers).

 

[jhu]

if you're really hell bent on going legacy free then get a mac or a sunultra

 

[Quitch]

The reason the floppy drive still exists (or is so well supported by end-users) is that it is so easy to use. Drag the files, delete the files, rename the files... CD-RW doesn't come close. At least, I haven't seen it happen. The sooner this media dies, the better. Floppies are unreliable, and very slow. The problem is that writeable CD software spent about five years doing the same thing over and over again; I don't get my floppy telling me I just had a buffer overrun, or that I selected a speed that the hardware says it supports, but the PC can't actually do. This is not the way to push out a new media.

USB should have pushed out serial and parallel ports, the problem is that in this industry people are still using stuff from ten years back, or maybe more (not to mention the early USB problems). People have old hardware they can plug in when things go wrong too (hardly a great reason though, why don't we start demanding they add support for our old Atari games?).

However, there is light. I believe Dell have started to drop floppy drives from their new models, and didn't the iMac lose it with its latest release as well? With the writeable DVD coming into existence, we're well beyond floppies, and they're finally meeting their maker. Let's hope USB 2.0 spells the same end for parallel and serial ports.

Maybe we'll even see some decent architecture design in the future once all this junk is gone? Well, it was just a thought.

 

[sandorski]

The only "legacy" device I use is my PS2 keyboard, don't want no friggin Windows keys!

 

[Lord Evermore]

FTPing files to or from work isn't always an option -- firewalls would prevent you running an FTP server that you can connect to from home, even if it wasn't just a stupid idea to have an open server. Leaving an FTP server open at your house would be just as bad.

Legacy ports for the most part work fine, are totally plug and play, are fast enough for any needs, work in any OS on any media and are already available. Legacy free still requires working around things sometimes, not being always able to make use of a device because an OS doesn't support it, not being able to use older devices. The only device that's truly a limitation anymore is the floppy drive. If that were deprecated in favor of a true replacement, with all the same functionality and ease of use, then we'd be set for a long time. PS/2 ports only have one drawback, that they take an IRQ for each one; I don't consider hot-plug capability a requirement for my keyboard and mouse when sitting at my desktop. Serial ports are useful sometimes, and can be simply disabled anytime they're not used. Same for parallel ports. Any issues with IRQs have been made avoidable by the implementation of APIC, giving you many more IRQs; I'm eagerly awaiting the next time I need to reinstall Windows so I can try it out, even though I don't really have any IRQ issues.

Getting rid of fully-functional input/output interfaces for something new just for the sake of changing technology and making people buy new stuff isn't the right idea. There are more fundamental issues that need to be addressed in the PC architecture (many of which are being addressed but not as quickly).

 

[jhu]

People have old hardware they can plug in when things go wrong too (hardly a great reason though, why don't we start demanding they add support for our old Atari games?).


unlike you, some of us really do have hardware that need serial or parallel ports. i don't have a use for the agp slot in my computer. should it be completely discarded then too? besides, you don't save much by getting rid of the "legacy" ports.

 

[dullard]

Horrible example. If your parallel goes out, you can always use your usb ports, at least you have multiple. You only have one parallel port. Since when do usb cards "go out" alot anyways?

You didn't understand my example. If I'm typing a report and need to print it on my USB printer, and something crashes with the USB card/ports/etc. then if you still have legacy support you can still print your report, get it in on time, and then come back and fix your USB problem. The chance that both USB and parallel die at the same time yet your computer still works is very slim. Parallel is a great backup fix if you are in a bind. Why get rid of it?

Or a usb port.

Very, very few UPSs come with anything but serial. And why should everyone be forced to throw away a perfectly good UPS and spend $100 on a new one just since you don't want them to have access to a serial port on their next computer?

IMO bioses should support usb keyboards 100% without having to emulate them as ps2 to the OS (including mice).

They should but so far they don't. When they do, then that is one less reason to worry. But it is still nice to be able to build a new computer and use your old serial or PS2 mice/keyboard without having to buy new ones.

Bandwidth is free, assuming you don't pay per MB. scp or ftp it to work. A couple keystrokes and it jets across the internet, much nicer than copying it to a floppy and carrying it with you.

Like I said above, in the real world most people need to use at least on computer that cannot do that since it isn't networked. Even if you have a modem on both you have to wait 1 min to dial up, pay for your online time if necessary, store it online, disconnect. Then repeat at the other computer. All that when a floppy can get your file written or read in 5 seconds.

I don't think so. vga ports are hot pluggable and pnp, although dvi is definitely nicer. Things will move to dvi eventually, but it's not that big of a deal for most people (who use crappy monitors anyways).

Who chooses what goes - certainly not the public since we still want our legacy parts. So what would you do if they got rid of parts you use? Suppose they got rid of USB next month since a newer, better thing came along. Would you enjoy having to replace everything you have on your next motherboard upgrade? Who says VGA won't go?

Sure I can, but things that I find cool or interesting you find worthless, so I can't expect your type to care. After all, you're the one putting files on floppies when you could just use scp

Let us know them, I'm willing to listen. Why should we give up our stuff and buy all new ones on our next motherboard upgrade? The chemical engineering lab next door just payed $20,000 per computer with the last upgrade to get rid of perfectly funcioning ISA cards - since ISA is legacy (note: these PCI replacements are worse than ISA since you cannot get as many accesses per second on PCI as you could on ISA). Your savings of $1 can cost others hundreds of thousands.

 

[Sunner]

I don't really care either way if serial/paralell ports go, I don't use them, but OTOH they don't annoy me either.

But what I really would like to see thrown away is the damn floppy.
Need to transfer a 25 KB file? Mail? FTP? SCP? SMB?
If a computer ever needs to transfer stuff to another computer it should be networked, LAN, dial up, DSL, doesn't matter, a computer is pretty much useless if it's not networked.
Heck even my grandma has 10 Mbit broadband.

Need to transfer a bit more?
CD-RW, granted even with UDF is takes a little longer to copy a 25 KB file to a CD-RW, but once you hit ~1 MB the CD will catch up simply cause of transfer rate.
And if you're talking more than what can fit on one floppy, the CD will annihilate the floppy in terms of speed.

A floppy costs ~$10, and a decent CD-RW costs ~$40, if those 30 bucks matter so much, then you probably can't afford a computer at all anyway.

 

[McCarthy]

Like I said earlier, I'm changing my views. While still typing on a model M.

But I have no sympathy for any company that has changed over at present. Every time this discussion comes up the 'but some researchers/hospitals/companies need ISA, need serial, need parallel'. Well, nobody's told me why serial/parallel on a PCI expansion card won't work. They're around, just gotta look. Just like P4 boards with ISA are around.

 

[Jeff7]

Does legacy free mean DVI connections only for the monitor.

There are simple convertors that adapt from DVI to the HD-DB15 connectors of normal monitors. I know they exist - I got one with my Radeon 9700 Pro. The DVI connector also carries an analog signal for this reason.

Simply put, I think that legacy devices are going to go away, at least in PC's. Maybe serial ports will remain, since some industrial applications use them - fine, add-in serial port cards, ISA even, since some hardware still uses ISA. Perhaps these sorts of things will fall into a niche market - something that like VIA could do maybe (just thinking anything now); a motherboard with ISA and serial ports, and a C3 or similar CPU built right in.

I hadn't used USB until maybe a year ago. Now I love it. My Epox 8RDA+ has 6 USB ports on the back - 4 are USB 1.1, 2 are USB 2.0. I've got my mouse, and Tacticalboard (gaming pad) plugged into the USB 1.1's on the motherboard itself, and my scanner is in the add-on bracket. I don't have any USB 2.0 devices yet. Maybe after the prices of those keychain-size USB 2.0 things comes down a bit I might get one of them; they sound nifty. Then I might be willing to give up the floppy drive on my main system. But I would still keep one on another computer in case I need to use mobile storage in DOS. That's something else I don't use much - now that I'm on WinXP and NTFS, DOS is useless because it can't see my hard drives.
Here's my legacy components right now:
- Keyboard (PS/2). It's a keyboard. It works; I like it enough that I've taken it apart and washed it, and changed the LED's to red, yellow, and green (a really nice green, not the normal crappy green that most computer LED's are). It's just a $7 Acer keyboard I got at a computer show some years back. If I need to go to USB, either I'll just get a new USB keyboard, or else I'll get one of these expensive buggers. For that price, I'd just get a new keyboard.
- Kodak DC3200 digital camera - it takes about a minute and a half to transfer just one picture to the PC. That's at 115kbps = 14kilobytes per second. If that thing was just USB1.1, that'd be maybe a bit under 12Mbit/sec (1.5MB/sec). That could be almost 3 pictures per second! Ok, it may be less amazing in the real world - maybe, 1 every 5 seconds.
- floppy drive. Once those keychain USB things come down in price a bit, I'll get one. Or five or ten maybe.

Originally posted by: McCarthy
Like I said earlier, I'm changing my views. While still typing on a model M.

But I have no sympathy for any company that has changed over at present. Every time this discussion comes up the 'but some researchers/hospitals/companies need ISA, need serial, need parallel'. Well, nobody's told me why serial/parallel on a PCI expansion card won't work. They're around, just gotta look. Just like P4 boards with ISA are around.

Exactly - dual serial PCI card

 

[human2k]

No.

 

[jhu]

with regard to the serial ports on pci cards, you notice how expensive those things are? $20 at least compared to them already being on the motherboard. give me the economics of that

 

[isaacmacdonald]

I haven't put a floppy drive in any computer I've assembled for the last 2.5 years. It really is time to get rid of those damn controllers as well as the space in the standard atx case. I can still use it for an extra HD, but it's just ugly.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Let us know them, I'm willing to listen. Why should we give up our stuff and buy all new ones on our next motherboard upgrade? The chemical engineering lab next door just payed $20,000 per computer with the last upgrade to get rid of perfectly funcioning ISA cards - since ISA is legacy (note: these PCI replacements are worse than ISA since you cannot get as many accesses per second on PCI as you could on ISA). Your savings of $1 can cost others hundreds of thousands.

This is why I said that I can't expect people with your opinion to care, I would like to see legacy stuff go simply for the fact that technology interests me, and I enjoy seeing/using new technology.

Also -as someone else mentioned, you can get pci (or usb) adapters for serial/parallel ports. It's not like your stuff will all of a sudden be rendered useless, you'll just have to buy a $5/$10/$20/whatever adapter if you expect to use your old ass hardware on a cutting edge motherboard. Seems reasonable to me.

 

[Lord Evermore]

"Cutting edge" doesn't mean having to get rid of perfectly functional, non-hindering hardware, just because it's not brand new. What does a serial port do that makes a board not as good? Or a parallel port? IRQ issues can't be blamed on the hardware, it can be blamed on the design of x86 itself. You think board makers are going to drop their prices tremendously just because they save a few cents on a couple of ports?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
"Cutting edge" doesn't mean having to get rid of perfectly functional, non-hindering hardware, just because it's not brand new. What does a serial port do that makes a board not as good? Or a parallel port? IRQ issues can't be blamed on the hardware, it can be blamed on the design of x86 itself. You think board makers are going to drop their prices tremendously just because they save a few cents on a couple of ports?

Like I said, for me personally, it's a matter of being interested in newer technologies. I don't want a parallel port on my motherboard for the same reason that I don't want a 1/4" jack on my sound card. It's old, I don't need it, don't want it, I want it to go the hell away so we can see some more insteresting designs. The mini-itx boards are sorta along the lines that I'm thinking, but some of them even have parallel/serial ports.

edit: I meant 1/4" jack in the context of hooking it up to some 1950's record player or something - not in the context of hooking it up to musical gear.

 

[bluemax]

Yep. He doesn't like it so it has to go. That's how the industry should work.

Just because YOU don't need a printer port or serial port or floppy disk doesn't mean there's LOTS of people out there that not only like them but DEPEND on them! :Q

Rather than designing a motherboard with NOTHING but USB and FireWire ports, how about a tight, efficient design that has EVERYTHING? Legacy AND new stuff. Or even putting 17 USB ports on the back of the board but have mobo headers to go out to bracket adapters? So long as people don't have to go and BUY add-on cards for unreasonable amounts.

 

[jhu]

Like I said, for me personally, it's a matter of being interested in newer technologies. I don't want a parallel port on my motherboard for the same reason that I don't want a 1/4" jack on my sound card. It's old, I don't need it, don't want it, I want it to go the hell away so we can see some more insteresting designs. The mini-itx boards are sorta along the lines that I'm thinking, but some of them even have parallel/serial ports.


get a mac

 

[McCarthy]

Originally posted by: jhu
with regard to the serial ports on pci cards, you notice how expensive those things are? $20 at least compared to them already being on the motherboard. give me the economics of that

Let's see, I never did have an external modem, never did have a digicam that needed serial, never did have a chemical research lab....

So I've had serial ports on every board I've ever had, including one on this brand new one, and haven't used the port except during the 386 days for my mouse. Even if it's 1 penny more per board that's...hmm, almost a dime that it's cost me. For nothing.
Infinite cost/benefit ratio.

For you it's $20 for something you need. Much better cost/benefit ratio. Why should the whole world pay even a few cents more per board to subsidize you?

 

[jhu]

i've never needed an agp slot. i don't play video games. why should i have to subsidize your use of them? why should there be any ports at all? you can get usb and firewire on a pci card. it's because people use them.

it's the same with serial ports. people use them. just because you don't use them doesn't justify getting rid of them. old technology doesn't necessarily mean useless technology. if you think it does, then get a mac or a sun

 

[CraigRT]

I don't use anything legacy... no floppy, no serial, no PS2..
It could all be gone, I wouldn't care.