legacy free computers

[star882]

Computers without parallel, serial, or PS2 ports(there will be 6 more USB 2.0 ports to make up).
How do you feel about this?

[Mutie]

Don't even think about touching my 8bit ISA slots. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Icebreak]

Most agencies are pretty happy when they get good hard copy and hard photos. If they receive a couple of 3.5s with the same exact information they are thrilled. Not every computer in every agency you may need to do business with has a CD drive.

[Tomas]

Heck, I run UNIX and Mac OS machines - since I don't have/need any of those I voted remove on all ... [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

I do just fine with the included USB, Firewire, and Ethernet ports, and the DVD / CD RW and ZIP drives.

Most any serious file (other than text) that I would want to transfer to another machine wouldn't fit on a floppy, anyway (even my digital camera files are about 4.3M apiece).

Floppies were fine when files were tiny, but these days they lack capacity.

Oh! I also use a couple of Flash Drives (Disk-On-Key) for moving things to other machines that have accessible USB ports. I have one 32M and one 128M and they are the best for most small/ medium sized stuff (getting something to the printer, etc.).

Of course one of my old machines still has ArcNet co-ax connections ... [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Take care,


main

Posted from a ** MICROSOFT FREE ZONE **

[Saaby]

Lets see...

Serial: Keep it! My calculator, X10 Controller, Remote, and various other gadgets run on serial. You can get USB-->Serial things now I believe but I'd rather just have the proper port there to begin with. Most of these are unique devices that don't come in USB flavors

Parallel: Drop it! Most parallel stuff is stuff you want to eventually upgrade, printers, scanners etc...and anything new comes with USB.

PS2: Drop it! Mice and Keyboards both come in USB flavors now.

Floppy: Keep it! I may not use it all that often but the floppy is tried and true and isn't about to die IIHO. How many external floppies has apple sold since they dropped it? Short of maybe a laptop, external flopy is a pain. They're not terribly expensive and they're everywhere, except--oddly enough--those newer Macs whose owners are too lazy/cheap to buy an external.

[Tomas]

Heheheheh ... The only external drives this lazy Mac user has on his desktop Mac, Ryan, are the two Firewire 40G hard drives I use for work space and mirrored backup.

[James Van Artsdalen]

USB-1 parallel adapters cannot fully emulate normal parallel ports - USB-1 does not have the bandwidth to do it. Such adapters work only with printers and probably not all of them.

USB serial ports are more likely to work but have their own problems. I find things work more reliably on real UARTs, and that they stay on the same COM port from boot to boot that way. Moreover, USB loses all timing information, and this can be useful (I wrote an NTP driver for a WWV clock that brings in its pps over the Carrier Detect line – that would be useless with USB).

I'm ambivalent about floppy drives. They’re unreliable and slow. But they are also essentially free (if you have room in the computers chassis) and the only really universal read/write medium.

Speaking as probably the only CPF’er with extensive experience in the PC keyboard & mouse designs (8042 firmware / PC side) I’d say dump USB and stick with PS/2 here. The PS/2 stuff is thoroughly understood in the industry and I haven’t heard of any problems in about ten years. USB adds no cost benefit that I have seen and is considerably more complex to implement (the hardware side is simpler but not the software) and there are still teething problems. Without cost savings or performance benefit I see no point to it.

USB is a good thing but it makes no sense to attack solved problems where no value is added, no cost is saved and functionality is potentially reduced.

[Charles Bradshaw]

I have 2 printers: both parallel. My mouse I can use with USB, but WHY, since I already have a dedicated PS/2 mouse port?? Same with keyboard. I have one thing that uses RS-232C, but it is not connected. I have one thing that uses USB. I still need 1 ISA slot for the 2nd parallel port. I have 1.44 MB and 1.2 MB (5.25") floppy drives. Half of my drivers are on floppies, though I should archive them to CD-ROM, as floppies do go bad over time.

[Empath]

The only reason to remove any of them is cost-cutting. I'd just as soon they left them all, replaced USB with USB 2, and add firewire and SCSI. If you don't need them, you don't have to use them.

[James S]

SCSI? I liked it when there were no other options for external connection than parallel port. However, none of the machines I'm buying nowadays have had it for a couple of year. I actually just packed up all my old hughly thick and pain-in-the-neck cables and terminators. Good Riddence to it. Firewire is my favorite right now. Fast and Cheap, good combination [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Serial? Don't need it for regular computer stuff anymore at all, but I'm with Saaby in having a lot of stuff connected to my computer like X10 and whatnot. I'm happy with my USB/Serial stuff. I can run a longer USB cable and plug in the serial stuff wherever it belongs. So you can get rid of it. Again, none of my current machines have it built in anyway.

Parallel? Haven't had it since my apple][e [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] Again though, this is a good cheap do-it-yourselfer kind of interface for people that want to connect it to external things. But I'm all serial and USB for this now.

I am looking forward to the day when Apple will finally add USB2 into their machines. But this is not currently a hardship. The price difference between firewire and usb2 enabled devices is not significant to me.

Floppy? Haven't had one in years either, it can go. I have one machine in the house that still has one, and I actually had to use it once last year. Took me 10 minutes with a can of compressed air to clean it out enough to work. They don't get much use.

But then, since computers are my business I tend to be at the bleeding edge of the curve on this sort of thing. Running pre-release operating systems on brand new hardware. Even if there is no one to buy the software I write for it yet, it pays to be at that end of the curve. So I whine about the changes as much as anyone, but I have to follow and I have rarely, if ever, gotten seriously burned by doing so.

[SFR]

Remove 'em all! Let's go with Bluetooth!

I hate all that "spaghetti" behind my computer and under my desk [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[star882]

"Don't even think about touching my 8bit ISA slots."
The ISA slots are already obsolete(neither my 633MHz Celeron nor my 2.4GHz Pentium 4 has ISA slots).
" USB-1 parallel adapters cannot fully emulate normal parallel ports - USB-1 does not have the bandwidth to do it. Such adapters work only with printers and probably not all of them."
USB 1.1 is 1.5MB/S in low and 12MB/S in high mode.
USB 2.0 is 480MB/S.
Parallel is 2.0MB/S.

[INRETECH]

I have to have my PAR port !

[jmm]

Serial, Parallel, SCSI, Firewire - Those that really feel they need them can add aftermarket PCI cards.

Motherboard BIOS controlled floppys are still convenient for some who work on sick PCs and need to run diagnostics (yes, I know how to make bootable CDs, but I don't like to). USB floppys are less "compatible", but getting better since legacy and bootable device BIOS support have become more refined, and commonplace.

USB as opposed to PS2 Keyboards and Mice - They suck, bigtime! When was the last time a PS2 keyboard or mouse ever left you with no alternative to reaching for the power switch? Ever actually tried using a USB KVM switch for serious work?

USB 1 & 2 for other peripherals - Greatest thing since sliced bread (not in the beginning as is often true, but now that the standard, devices, drivers, and built in OS support have "matured"). Some think USB was really invented by Microsoft to force people to quit using NT4.

IR - You gotta be kidding? Must have been invented to help those with too many unassigned IRQs.

Bluetooth Wireless - Still waiting for the hype to settle and someone to prove something to me.

802.11x Wireless - "A" works well, but the range generally sucks and prices have not dropped enough to make it a serious contender for the standard of choice. "B" is a little slow but reasonably priced and entierly usable for a lot of mundane things. "G" sounds interesting.

John

[star882]

I think USB mouses feel better than PS2 mouses.
This effect is more pronounced in 9x/ME than 2000/XP.

[James Van Artsdalen]

Originally posted by star882:
" USB-1 parallel adapters cannot fully emulate normal parallel ports - USB-1 does not have the bandwidth to do it. Such adapters work only with printers and probably not all of them."
USB 1.1 is 1.5MB/S in low and 12MB/S in high mode.
USB 2.0 is 480MB/S.
Parallel is 2.0MB/S.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">A parallel port in ECP mode can be upwards of 1 MB/s. I'll have to dig out the specs to get the number.

USB has a poor payload-to-bandwidth ratio: the bandwidth may be 12 Mb/s but the most data you can get across it in the real world is around 800 KB/s (and I've not seen that personally under Windows but rather DOS).

USB-2 has some screwy limits. If you add up the maximum bandwidth any one device is allowed to use you get about 24 MB/s.

All existing USB-1 parallel port pretenders exclude ECP. I believe EPP mode would be possible but I haven't tried to vendors to confirm/deny EPP support.

I'm using "B" to mean bytes and "b" to mean bits.

[Zelandeth]

Arg...remove any of the above and I'd go mad...was bad enough when I got the new PC realising that I'd have to either ditch all the SCSI harddrives or buy a new SCSI controller card because the old one was ISA...and the new machine was all PCI.

Used my USB mouse for about a month - then put the PS/2 adaptor into use as I was sick fed up of it cutting out whenever I was rendering a 3D scene, or playing a graphically intensive game.

Serial ports I'd hate to lose, as it'd mean I'd actually have to set up a real network - rather than my RS-232 lead running around the side of the room. For one, I don't want to have to find another PCMCIA network card for the Amiga - not after the performance I had getting the PC to talk it it last time. Generally speaking I don't use the PC for anything other than music, games on the rare occasions I play them, and net access - because there still isn't a decent browser for the Amiga anywhere...which is annoying.

Zel.

(A1200D Revision 1.D.4, Blizzard 1230 030/50MHz accelrator, 64mb RAM, 700Mb Harddisk, OS3.0)

[star882]

"Used my USB mouse for about a month - then put the PS/2 adaptor into use as I was sick fed up of it cutting out whenever I was rendering a 3D scene, or playing a graphically intensive game."
You probably have it set to share IRQs.
I don't have the problem, and the mouse feels better when I use USB(very noticeable under 9x/ME, small difference under 2000/XP).
" Arg...remove any of the above and I'd go mad...was bad enough when I got the new PC realising that I'd have to either ditch all the SCSI harddrives or buy a new SCSI controller card because the old one was ISA...and the new machine was all PCI."
ISA is very slow compared to PCI.
ISA is gone from new computers now.

[Brotherscrim]

Originally posted by jmm:
USB as opposed to PS2 Keyboards and Mice - They suck, bigtime! When was the last time a PS2 keyboard or mouse ever left you with no alternative to reaching for the power switch?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The last time either my keyboard OR my mouse got unplugged - some (i'm guessing older) styles of PS2 ports aren't hot-plugable. Though it is true I came accross a PS2 port that didn't shut down when a mouse was unplugged. And I've seen some that kill both ports if either one was unplugged.

--Scrimmy

[Canuke]

I'm on a USB mouse but PS/2 keyboard. USB keyboards seem to be rather rare still for some reason.

I need a parallel port for my LightWave dongle. Other than that, the serial ports are disabled on this main machine, and Ethernet/hub take care of all transfers.

ISA is ancient and should be gone from all general purpose PC's. However, ISA is vastly easier to design for, as I understand it, so perhaps it should be kept around for dedicated electronics engineering machines.

PCI is already getting to be a bottleneck, at least in its 32 bit, 33MHz form. I've got two 64-bit, 66MHz slots in this machine (it's a dually) so anybody know what I can put in there?

Floppies, DIE, DIE, DIE! With CD-R's Ethernet and bootable CD-R's for recovery, who needs them? Other than for file transfers to and from Amigas, that is. I'm not mocking Zelandeth, I've got a 600 and a 1200 here (though not active at this time), and at one time my main machine was a salvaged A2000 whose motherboard bore crusty mouse droppings of real mice, and had its Agnus socket held together by rubber bands. And yet I still managed to soup it up with a Zeus '040/28 MHz and a Picasso video board. Oh, the days when 40MB of RAM was cavernous... now it won't even accomodate the OS...

[Stingray]

Parallel - phase it out - you can always add a PCI card if need be
Serial - don't need it anymore
PS2 - keep it, the mice work much better
Floppy - too small - phase into zip disks or similar - they are bootable too

BTW, I own a small computer company, we have an account with Tech Data and other wholesale suppliers. CPF members can have parts drop shipped directly to them at wholesale cost plus 15% and actual shipping if desired. Warning: sometimes items on sale at CompUSA etc are cheaper than my cost plus 15%, not usually, but sometimes, so check first [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

USB keyboards are easy to come by.

[star882]

"PS2 - keep it, the mice work much better"
Then why my mouse feels much better when I use USB(this is very noticeable under 98/ME, lesser difference under 2000/XP)?

[Harrkev]

Originally posted by stingray:
&lt;&lt;SNIP&gt;&gt;
Serial - don't need it anymore
PS2 - keep it, the mice work much better
&lt;&lt;SNIP&gt;&gt;

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I disagree. First, anybody who has a GPS *WILL* need a serial connection in order to talk to their GPS receiver to transfer waypoints/maps/routes/firmware upgrades/etc.

Second, Mandrake Linux 9.0 refuses to recognize my mouse (generic Microsoft optical wheel mouse) on the PS2 port! [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img] Same mouse worked like a charm on USB, though. [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

Lastly, there are a lot of cool hardware devices that hook up to the parallel port. This includes such things as processor debuggers, JTAG programming cables, PAL/CPLD/EPROM programmers, cheap logic analyzers, etc. Most people don't need these things, but it sure can be handy.

I also remember years ago needing to stimulate a digital circuit. Since a parallel port is TTL, I just wrote a C program to directly write to the bits of the port. This allowed me to debug a circuit. That is useful.

[star882]

"I disagree. First, anybody who has a GPS *WILL* need a serial connection in order to talk to their GPS receiver to transfer waypoints/maps/routes/firmware upgrades/etc."
There are gizmos that convert a USB port to a serial one.
Of course, the new GPS receivers will use USB.
"Lastly, there are a lot of cool hardware devices that hook up to the parallel port. This includes such things as processor debuggers, JTAG programming cables, PAL/CPLD/EPROM programmers, cheap logic analyzers, etc. Most people don't need these things, but it sure can be handy.

I also remember years ago needing to stimulate a digital circuit. Since a parallel port is TTL, I just wrote a C program to directly write to the bits of the port. This allowed me to debug a circuit. That is useful. "
There are also gadgets that convert a USB port into a parallel port.

[Saaby]

"Second, Mandrake Linux 9.0 refuses to recognize my mouse (generic Microsoft optical wheel mouse) on the"

Switch to Redhat--it's the best [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Empath]

I'm Curious. What is the objective in removing any feature or type of port?

[star882]

To free up resources(IRQ, memory, etc).

[Stingray]

Originally posted by star882:
Then why my mouse feels much better when I use USB(this is very noticeable under 98/ME, lesser difference under 2000/XP)?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Might just be your particular mouse. You don't have to use the PS2 port, I just think it should remain onboard the motherboard. You could still use any USB mouse if desired.

[Stingray]

Originally posted by Harrkev:
[QBFirst, anybody who has a GPS *WILL* need a serial connection in order to talk to their GPS receiver to transfer waypoints/maps/routes/firmware upgrades/etc.

Second, Mandrake Linux 9.0 refuses to recognize my mouse (generic Microsoft optical wheel mouse) on the PS2 port! [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img] Same mouse worked like a charm on USB, though. [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

Lastly, there are a lot of cool hardware devices that hook up to the parallel port. This includes such things as processor debuggers, JTAG programming cables, PAL/CPLD/EPROM programmers, cheap logic analyzers, etc. Most people don't need these things, but it sure can be handy.

I also remember years ago needing to stimulate a digital circuit. Since a parallel port is TTL, I just wrote a C program to directly write to the bits of the port. This allowed me to debug a circuit. That is useful.[/QB]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">You can always add a PCI parallel port or serial port card if desired, I just think most people would be better off without it onboard the motherboard. Granted some power users would still want them. Most mobo manufacturers would have both types, some with these ports, some without. The motherboards would be cheaper without them and have more available resources. Keeping the PS2 port doesn't stop anyone from using a USB mouse. Most of the time, a PS2 mouse works better for the average home and small business user. There are always exceptions. There are so many possible combinations of motherboards, mice, and operating systems that there will always be cases of USB peripheralsworking better than PS2 and vice versa. Its not really a black and white issue.

[jmm]

Empath - Good point. Most of us probably don't want to see some of the stuff go away, but it's happening. It can free up IRQ "clutter" (many of which are shared today) and reduce chip count. Since that simplifies design and may save a buck or two in the long run, that's what some motherboard manufacturers have already started doing.

Brotherscrim - You're absolutely right about NOT being able to hot plug PS2 ports, I'll have to concede that is probably their greatest weakness. Hot plugging or unplugging PS2 devices can take out a motherboard, so precautions should be taken to insure they don't get disconnected accidentally.

star882 - In terms of mouse "responsiveness", a lot depends on the specific sensors/drivers being used. Many of the current optical mice sample at significantly higher rates than 1st generation devices, but some manufacturers still sell old design clunkers with non optimal drivers. Like Zelandeth, I keep running into situations that trash USB mice, but rarely encounter anything that adversely affects a good PS2 mouse. I've had several of the "no PS2" machines so far. I changed the motherboard on a PS2-less PC after a month, but the Macs are tougher to deal with because Steve Jobs decreed the end of native ADB hardware support (which was Apple's equivalent of PS2). Some mice I don't like "work" (like the ridiculous one button piece of garbage that Apple still thinks is adaquate), but if I use the one I like, the mouse driver doesn't load on about 1 out of 6 boots. This is a problem that should ultimately be solved by a new driver from that particular mouse manufacturer, but I'm getting tired of waiting. Things like this were rare with PS2/ADB.

I probably have every USB and Firewire to "whatever" adapter known to man. Most of them have "limitations" (some serious), but they can be useful on occasion. Like a lot of other things, many of these were a joke when first released, but some got better with firmware and driver revisions.

I have a lot of still useful old stuff that requires serial and parallel connectionds such as PROM burners, GPS, data loggers, multimeters, Postscript printers, specialized test equipment etc. Almost everything I buy now naturally comes with USB connectivity, but I'd really like to be able to keep using what I've got with it's native interface for as long as possible, or at least until I decide to upgrade something, as opposed to being pushed into it because something that was otherwise still useful wouldn't connect easily to a new (and better?) computer.

John