Legacy Free PC

[Penth]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the forum, though I've been browsing here for quite a while.

I'm excited for all of the new technology that is coming out and/or going mainstream this year. BTX, SATA, and PCI-E are of particular interest to me. With BTX, can we expect a legacy-free PC? I've got several Athlon PCs in my home, and would be very happy to build a new Athlon64 in BTX form factor without serial ports, parallel ports, floppy drive connectors, and even IDE. I realize there aren't SATA Optical Drives around yet, and that these drives don't demand the bandwidth of SATA, but are they expected out this year? I do understand the need for backwards compatibility, I guess I would just use other computers for that. Anyway, that has just been on my mind recently. Sorry for this post being all over the place.

I guess my one question is, who else wants a legacy-free PC this year?

 

[labrat25]

would i like one? yes... could i afford it? not this year

i would love to get a pc w/out serial/parallel ports or floppies... but will it happen? probably not

were the motherboard makers to do that they'd automatically be cutting down the sales from all those people who want the cutting edge but don't want to replace everything

ex. building a new computer that only has SATA means everyone who wanted to build a new computer but keep their brand new (but IDE) DVD burners would hafta buy adapters...

more hastle = less sales = bad for business

 

[dullard]

Welcome to Anandtech posting.

There are plenty of people on this board who disagree with me, but I would definately NOT want to see legacy free PCs. You pay only a few bucks extra to have the capability to run everything ever made. With a legacy free PC, if you ever need something that isn't updated to the latest version you'll fork over $20+ for a converter (far more than the few bucks you saved by not having the part to begin with). So in many situations you end up losing money on a legacy free computer.

Take your ideal computer without IDE as an example. Suppose something goes wrong with your IDE free computer or with an old computer - or even say you just want to move files from one drive to another. The easiest, fastest, and in many cases only solution is to put both drives into one machine. You are s#$% out of luck. Your old computers don't have SATA and your new computer doesn't have IDE. Time to head of to the store and fork over a lot of money.

Just last week someone asked me how to find a computer to use his ISA card. Don't think you'll never have a friend that needs you to use a legacy device. Unless you have no friends, but I stray from the topic...

 

[WackyDan]

There will be optical SATA drives this year.

 

[labrat25]

There will be optical SATA drives this year.

but if you just spent a couple hundred bucks... say this month... for a DVD burner, would you really want to deal with a mobo that can't handle it?

 

[nageov3t]

a computer without a floppy? that's sheer madness, I tell you 😛

I only use my floppy once every 6 months, but when I do need to use it, somehow it's always a mission-critical need. heh.

 

[Bovinicus]

Originally posted by: loki8481
a computer without a floppy? that's sheer madness, I tell you 😛

I only use my floppy once every 6 months, but when I do need to use it, somehow it's always a mission-critical need. heh.

I hear that. I tried to build my friend a system without a floppy drive. Guess what? Things didn't go as planned, and I ended up stripping the floppy out of some old 486 I had stored in my basement to get it up and running. The floppy drive should be renamed the "just in case" drive.

 

[jhu]

this has been touched upon before, but what good does a legacy-free computer do for you? once it's all setup, it runs programs no differently than a non-legacy-free pc. i do like legacy-free pcs, but only if they have advanced bioses to go with them. some examples: 1) the mac has a built-in telnet server in rom, 2) sun machines have openfirmware and can boot off the network (which they've been able to do for the past 15 years!)

again, personally i think this idea of non-legacy is rather stupid. no serial, no parallel, no ps/2, no pci/agp, but why the hell do still stick with x86??? you want sata instead of ide? well, fibre channel is still better.

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: labrat25

There will be optical SATA drives this year.

but if you just spent a couple hundred bucks... say this month... for a DVD burner, would you really want to deal with a mobo that can't handle it?

Bah.... There will continue to be ATX boards out there and introduced NEW no less. You know BTX is coming.... You know it's going Legacy free. It's a fact of life and it's time to move on.

I understand the $$$ issue of prior investments. It pains me too. That is probably the one reason you won't see me jumping on the new boards any day soon.

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: Bovinicus

Originally posted by: loki8481
a computer without a floppy? that's sheer madness, I tell you 😛

I only use my floppy once every 6 months, but when I do need to use it, somehow it's always a mission-critical need. heh.

I hear that. I tried to build my friend a system without a floppy drive. Guess what? Things didn't go as planned, and I ended up stripping the floppy out of some old 486 I had stored in my basement to get it up and running. The floppy drive should be renamed the "just in case" drive.

Here is some advice... Buy a USB 2.0 floppy. Select USB as a boot option.

Won't solve all your problems but has for me.

 

[jhu]

Here is some advice... Buy a USB 2.0 floppy. Select USB as a boot option.

Won't solve all your problems but has for me.

except that not all motherboards support booting from usb whereas all motherboards since the original ibm pc support booting from floppy. of course i still prefer boot from network and serial console access.

 

[nageov3t]

Originally posted by: WackyDan

Originally posted by: Bovinicus

Originally posted by: loki8481
a computer without a floppy? that's sheer madness, I tell you 😛

I only use my floppy once every 6 months, but when I do need to use it, somehow it's always a mission-critical need. heh.

I hear that. I tried to build my friend a system without a floppy drive. Guess what? Things didn't go as planned, and I ended up stripping the floppy out of some old 486 I had stored in my basement to get it up and running. The floppy drive should be renamed the "just in case" drive.

Here is some advice... Buy a USB 2.0 floppy. Select USB as a boot option.

Won't solve all your problems but has for me.

I see how that could be useful if you're running out of 3.5" bays, but otherwise, floppy drives are so cheap that putting one in a computer won't break anyone's budget. I think that my floppy drive was, like, $8 at newegg. heh.

 

[gunblade]

If you are do EE work and would sometime use the PC for work then it is not for you.

Too bad most of the engineering testing equipment are to be connected to serial or parallel port. Hell, even some hobbyist FPGA board are to be connected to serial port only. I know there is USB converter but most of the time the equipment's software either don't support or it is very hard to setup it to work.

 

[Penth]

Yeah, I see some of the obvious downsides of not having the backwards compatibility. I've had a PC without a floppy drive for over two years now. Bootable USB Thumb drives could solve the problem of needing to boot from a floppy I think. Transferring files from one computer to another could be quickly done over gigabit networking. I am with you on not wanting to buy a new DVD burner because your motherboard doesn't support IDE. I guess the reason I'm interested in it is because I'll be building a new computer at the end of the year, so I have no funds tied up in older hardware that I would want to move to my new computer.

 

[jhu]

I guess the reason I'm interested in it is because I'll be building a new computer at the end of the year, so I have no funds tied up in older hardware that I would want to move to my new computer.

That's not necessarily a good reason to go legacy-free though. you'd definitely be limiting your hardware options in such a case. like i said before, if you want to go completely legacy free, go with a mac or sun

 

[bluemax]

Meh. Give me legacy! Heck, if there's room, give me the option of an ISA slot!! 😀

My awesome, cheap-as-borcht-to-run laser printer needs parallel and I'm not going to change because some kiddies who use new $50 usb inkjet printers tell me they don't need the port so it should be done away with.

And I still hook up 3-year-old MIDI equipment via serial port (though the very latest have switched to USB.)

I suppose if you stripped serial/parallel ports off the mainboard you could fit 6 USB ports and firewire on there instead of a "mere" 2-4 USB ports.

Maybe someday, but for now there's too many "legacy" products that work TOO well to get rid of!


Of course, MFR's could make two different versions of a mobo, one with/one without legacy....

 

[psiu]

Legacy hardware is less a problem for me than legacy software...such as Windows.

And the result of the offspring of the two....like driving two hours to get a modem working right. Because it was a PCI modem, which apparently has...issues. Which then relates back to all of this hardware and software basically tracing their lineage back to CP/M and the original Intel-based machines.

While they may be different, they all tend to follow certain conventions established in the computing Jurassic era and build upon the previous technology.

Not that this is bad, as evolutionary steps obviously sort themselves out quicker than revolutionary ones, but it leads to things being grafted together all willy-nilly like in software and hardware hodge-podged together.

Just idle ramblings...and yes there are alternatives, but in my case I need a Windows machine. Why? So my wife can check her hotmail in Interet Explorer (I use Firefox) and play Freecell. And not be scared by the big mean penguin. I'm going to eat now....

 

[Penth]

I guess all of that makes sense. I don't have a whole lot of legacy hardware, and everything I do have I would just hook up to another computer. I realize not everyone has a bunch of extra machines laying around though. Oh well, maybe one day.