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Why the hell are legacy devices still on new mobos?

zoomie
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zoomie
zoomie
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Why are the vast majority of motherboards available today still populated with legacy i/o devices such as floppy interfaces, PS2 mice and keyboard ports, parallel ports, and serial ports? I wish the manufacturers would start offering more legacy free choices. It has been well over five years since I've used anything with parallel ports, serial ports, or a floppy drive.

 

A motherboard without legacy devices could lead to more USB ports and built-in firewire. And while they're at it, why not bump up the onboard NICs to Gigabit Ethernet...most are still 10/100. IDE is going away too..they could have just SATA.

 

Can anyone recommend a legacy free motherboard?

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Onetrack
Onetrack
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I'm with you on that, serial / parallel ports are so last century.

I did a quick google search on ' legacy free '.. there are a few motherboards out there from Abit that are. There is a forum posting here at extreme tech where they build legacy free.

I guess if you really want that, go with an imac, macbook or mini.

 

edit: Heres the actual build article..

Edited by Onetrack
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e-rick
e-rick
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I killed my bios last week (played a bit with memory settings..). I was very happy I still had a floppy drive somewhere in a box in the attic..

Attached, flashed new bios, working..

But just make it so that the primary boot device is some SD slot or USB or whatever.. . and floppy and parallel and serial ports can be left out easily.

 

PS/2 i'd like to keep though.. For some reason my keyboard isn't recognized automatically by Ubuntu and OSX when I connect it though USB..

so I have to use it through PS/2..(which sucks)

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blackturtleneck
blackturtleneck
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The average home still has a lot of legacy equipment. Imagine your typical PC user looking for an upgrade to his P3. He gets told his whole machine needs to be replaced because his memory, power supply, etc is not compatible. Now tell him his old laserjet and GPS that works perfectly for him will need to be replaced too, along with his keyboard and mouse. He will most likely decide his P3 is fast enough. Removing features is not the way to sell a product.

 

Printers and modems are not the only uses for legacy ports. I use parallel for programing Atmels and eproms. I use serial for doing diagnostics on my car. USB to serial adapters seldom work properly. To change the interface for either of these would be of no benefit. I want a MacBook badly but it is missing the ports I need most. Even the Pro is out because of the lack of useful express cards. My old thinkpad gets used while my TiBook sits in the closet because of lack of legacy ports. Forchrissake, ONE serial port is all I ask for and I'll buy one today. A computer is a tool, when it stops doing what you need it to it becomes a toy. A completely legacy free PC is about as useless as an xbox.

 

On another note, how did we end up with usb keyboard and mice? What's wrong with ps2? (interestingly enough I find ps2 to be smoother and faster in osx86 than usb) If we have to use usb for input, how about the manufacturers shortening the damned mouse cord! Apple can do it why can't anyone else? I have about a zillion feet of cord twist-tied on my desk from my MS mouse. It's nice to have one style of connector for everything but even that is not perfect. Just like scsi devices running at the speed of the slowest device, we have usb1 vs. usb2. Now firewire 400 and 800. Or should firewire be considered legacy too as the majority of devices are usb2? What's the cut off? We may be getting faster but the incompatibilities are just as bad now as they were when we were jumpering modems and sound cards.

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zoomie
zoomie
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@ onetrack - Yeah, I saw those articles too..but they're a bit outdated...the one from extremetech is 2002. I already have a mac mini...but theres no fun in building it...besides the case is a {censored} to take off.

 

@ Munky - good point about the PATA...I forgot about the CD/DVD drives.

 

@e-rick - I hosed a BIOS about a month ago, and was able to reflash just using a CD-R. Also, one of the first things I usually do when building a new system is to disable most of the legacy stuff in the BIOS settings.

 

@blackturtleneck - I never said manufacturers should stop building systems with legacy devices. I just wish the motherboard manufacturers would give us more choices. Choice is a good thing right? More power to you if you want to have a PS2 Keyboard or you want to deal with a variety of cables and connector types. I realize that the average home user may have plenty of legacy devices, but the average home user isn't going to build a computer from scratch either. People that build their own systems are the types of people that will usually have more current devices and don't need legacy devices....and if I needed a serial port, I could simply get a PCI card with serial..they're pretty affordable.

Edited by zoomie
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frizbot
frizbot
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PS/2 is slow and has breakable pins. Just look at the variety that USB has brought. The only bad thing about the switch is similar to Apple's switch from ADB to USB, that low level or legacy things don't recognize USB early enough sometimes (I'm thinking Macsbug etc).

 

Legacy connectors are cheap. Pennies each. The technology is already there for them in the chipset. Rather than take the loss of hundreds of customers that have legacy devices, they add the connectors. I agree though, I'd rather have a MB with only SPDIF, USB, Firewire, Ethernet, and DVI on the back. You could fit 4 SPDIF connectors, a dozen USB ones, etc. I'd rather than a premium board manufacturer put the legacy connectors on PCI slots, and just have modern connectors on the back.

 

They're being phased out, but the market refuses to stop selling PS/2 and printer port {censored}. Legacy hardware is fun and useful, but there must be a break for modern computing. PATA, we need that; implementations of SATA CD drives are poor. Internal firewire ports would make a good replacement, though only Apple did that, and not for long. The market has been producing a lot of legacy hardware lately however, and I'm sick of it. Socket A lasted a thousand years, but DDR2 killed Socket939 so fast, and DDR3 is forthcoming. As long as PCI-E 2.0 is backwards and forwards compatible, I won't kill anyone.

Edited by frizbot
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Eric.C
Eric.C
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i really dont see the point of this issue, if you're like me and have no legacy devices, then dont use the legacy ports, then only problem i see with the ports is that it causes confusion in normal users, but im sure all of us here can all tell the difference between USB and PS/2. besides, who carefully examines the back of their computers each day to complain about the legacy ports, you cant see them most of the time anyway

Edited by Eric.C
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frizbot
frizbot
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They slow things down, they're unnecessary, they add to the cost, they take up space that modern things could use, we want to move away from legacy things in general with a clean break. There's reasons to get rid of them, and reasons that they still exist.

 

Legacy things can be important. The most "legacy" thing in the modern PC is the 8086-based CPU.

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