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Abit's New Motherboard Lays On The Ports
An enthusiastic reader submits: "Possibly the most innovative motherboard to be released in years, Abit's MAX series intends to dive headfirst into the next generation of computing, leaving legacy ports behind in their dust.
Hardcoreware.net has the first full review of this board, which has support for 10 USB devices and 12 (YES, 12) IDE devices." I wish it had even more built-in USB ports, but six is a good start.
And after all these years, i'm just NOW finally finding a need for more than the standard two serial ports! (x10 controller, ups, smartcard device, etc)
With 12 IDE ports, it has nearly as much capacity as my 2-channel SCSI card!
Hope you enjoy IRQ-sharing...
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Now I don't need all 5 of those Promise ATA contollers I've got!
Never has the announcement of a motherboard created as much buzz around the PC hardware enthusiast community as the Abit "MAX" series of motherboards (something tells me they really wanted to call it "Matrix" instead). This line of boards, available on both Athlon and Pentium 4 platforms, is Abit's attempt at taking motherboards one step into the next generation, leaving things like legacy ports in its dust.
Windows 2000/XP/ME only. Win98 users need not apply.
How significant is this step though? If you've been paying attention to the hype surrounding these boards, you might think that it is a giant leap for motherboard kind. We're going to find out if this is the case, or if the MAX series is rather a baby step.
Giant leap or baby step, one thing is for certain, the AT7, Abit's first board in the MAX lineup, is definitely one of the most unique boards you'll see today. The AT7 uses the newest, fastest chipset for the Athlon platform, VIA's KT333. KT333 supports most of the newest features you'll need, such as native ATA/133 hard drives, onboard 5.1 audio with digital output, support for DDR333 SDRAM, and more. Abit takes that one step further, and adds a ton of integrated components intended for the next generation of computing. This includes both FireWire AND USB2.0 controller, a 4 channel ATA/133 RAID adapter (making for an unprecedented support of 10 ATA drives onboard), onboard 10/100 LAN, and MediaXP support. These would all be excellent useful addons for most boards, but that's where the MAX series is different - these aren't just addons for the motherboard, they actually replace all legacy parts on the board. Have a look!
This is definitely the most unique ATX rear panel I've ever seen on a consumer board. Notice the complete lack of legacy ports - this includes PS/2, ATA, serial, parallel, the whole shebang! Instead, we get 4 USB 1.1 ports, 2 USB 2.0 ports, a pair of IEEE1394 FireWire ports, full analog 5.1 audio out, digital audio out, and a LAN connector. This is what really sets the MAX boards apart. It is FINALLY time to get rid of that old Dexxa ball mouse that came with your first SVGA card. While you're at it, toss out that old Dot Matrix printer, and even the $13 keyboard with the ASDFJKL: keys completely rubbed off! Abit steps into a new era of computing with the MAX boards
There are some other noticeable differences in the board layout. First off, you are only going to get 3 PCI slots. This is because most of the peripherals that would use a PCI slot, such as the Ethernet adapter and sound card, are already onboard. Personally I've never used more than 3 PCI slots, and with this board, not a single slot it used. Yep, 3 should definitely be enough.
Despite having all the next-gen high performance capabilities, SCSI is still absent. This proves that while the AT7 is a very high end board, it is still targeted to the consumer market. Thanks, Abit!
Video Game cheats, hints a
For those who are unaware, the Abit website is NOT www.abit.com; that reroutes you to motherboards.com. The site you want is www.abit-usa.com or www.abit.com.twinstead.
Got Wisdom?
check out this site for some pretty pictures of abits new board http://www.ocworkbench.com/2002/abit/at7/at7previe w1.htm
What will the usefulness of 12 IDE ports be? Anyone who needs that much hard drives will be using SCSI
:)
I'd love it. Every time I buy more hard drive space, I have to toss another drive from my box (dvd-rom + cdrw + 2 hd's). I'm working on a nice little pile, currently 10 and 20gb drives at the top. That kind of space is nothing to sniff at. It'd be nice to just pop them in, it's the space I want, not the marginal increase in access time or transfer rate.
SCSI costs more, always has, always will. I shouldn't need to spend the extra $hundreds just to be able to use a few drives at once, hence the need for boards like this. Of course, the mobo probably costs a small fortune, but if a LOT were like this, then my point would make more sense
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Yup, read the article. 4 of the 10 are internal.
12 * 160 GB = is almost 2 TB!!!
And the sound of a 747 taking of comes @ no extra charge!
I don't even know what an AST Rampage is... All I know is I'm running a PII 250, and it works just fine. If you have to buy new parts because you can't make your old stuff work, sounds like you got some learning to do.
What?? My KT7 is stable as a mofo'. Overclocks like a charm too. Never had a problem with it. (knock on wood)
my fav MB is still the tyan thunder K7 with onboard dual scsi ultra 160. it has all the pins for more USB if you want, and the nature of USB itselfs lets you add on as you need it... there is no need to START with 10 ports.
as for IDE, i thought they were getting rid of legacy support?!
this seems worthless to me. in fact, i think i'll go get another thunder K7 on pricewatch just to show abit where they should be heading.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
My guess is 4 channels are RAID. So you could have 8 drives in a RAID setup. The other two channels are normal IDE for CD/DVD drives, Zip, etc. If you look at the pics, it looks like 4 RAID ports and 2 normal IDE ports.
Fortran programmer...oh yeah. Array math for life!
[Page 2 is also pretty interesting ... then it delves into BIOS screen shots and benchmarks]
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Got Storage?
Have a look at the vast number of ATA connectors - 6 channels! The yellow connectors are for the Highpoint ATA/133 RAID controller (which works perfectly fine in non-RAID mode). The two higher up on the board are the natively controlled IDE channels, also supporting ATA/133. This makes for an amazing 12 possible drives without the use of a single PCI slot!
Below the RAID channels you'll see a floppy adapter, one of the lingering legacy ports still found on this generation of MAX boards... I personally don't use a floppy drive anymore, but it will be necessary to use a floppy if you plan on installing Windows XP on a drive controlled by the Highpoint IDE. How ironic!
Besides what I've mentioned, and the fact that there are 4 RAM slots (up to three 1GB sticks may be used at a time with non-registered RAM, four if you are using registered), the layout is pretty much standard ATX fare. There are a couple nasty layout problems though, which I'll get to later in the review.
In addition to the 6 USB ports on the ATX rear panel (4 USB1.1 and 2 USB2.0), there are onboard connectors for 4 more USB 2.0 connectors, for a total of 10 devices! There is also an extra output for one more IEEE1394 port. The IEEE1394 controller used by the AT7 is capable of full speed 400mb/sec. So no matter what interface your advanced external peripherals are going to use, Abit definitely has you covered with the AT7.
Once again, Abit gets unique with the AT7, this time with the bundle. Included are a set of nifty black IDE cables (3 IDE cables, 1 floppy cable). This is a great way to have some nice looking custom IDE cables without worrying about using rounded cables (IDE cables are flat for a reason you know!). Also included are a set of cable tie-downs, to aide in keeping your PC nice and tidy inside. This is a great little bundle for a motherboard! A custom ATX rear panel plate is also included of course; the one that came with your case is now officially outdated. You also get one PCI plate USB adapter, to be used on one of the USB2.0 outputs on the motherboard. I would have liked to see a pair of these, in addition to another firewire adapter, since the board supports it. Unfortunately, you're going to have to get your own this time.
MediaXP
One significant absence in our package (I believe Abit is going to make it an option for some retail packages) is a MediaXP panel! MediaXP is one of the great steps forward with the MAX series. Basically, it adds integrated support for various portable media, including Smart Media, Compact Flash, and even Sony's Memory Stick. MediaXP also includes headphone and microphone jacks, SPDIF ports, and 2 USB ports! It is expected that most cases will start using MediaXP panels, rather than their own Mickey Mouse panels you see now. It is already beginning to look like the MAX is taking the PC a step in the right direction...
I wish motherboard manufacturers would stop integrating all this useless stuff. I don't want integrated sound, IDE RAID, or any of that other junk. I don't even particularly care for integrated IDE.
Think of how much more stable the motherboards would be if there were less chips present and less IRQs being shared. Oh yeah, in theory PCI is supposed to share IRQs with no problem, but that doesn't mean it actually works out that way in practice.
There wouldn't be much cost savings associated with getting rid of these functions, but spending $5 or $10 less on a product is always nice.
And, no, sometimes you can't just turn these features off in the BIOS. Even worse, sometimes there's no way to reclaim the IRQs that are lost due to integrated functions! Check out some of the really bad implementations out there. It's a nightmare trying to make those poorly designed boards work. Abit is not known for their stability or great design, so I don't have much faith in this motherboard. Even if Asus made a board like this, I would have some trouble trusting it.
Getting rid of the PS/2 ports is just asinine. They are an industry standard. USB sucks. PS/2 works.
Just who do you expect is buying new motherboards? People hoping to drop in a replacement for the dead mobo in their XT? If you're happy with legacy ports and busses, nobody is forcing you to upgrade. For me, the next time I build a PC, I'd rather not have interrupts and physical space taken up by interfaces I haven't used in at least three years.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
So, why exactly are you not only reading, but also posting, to Slashdot?
According to the cut and paste job above ( Most importantly, IDE RAID...which rocks. With IDE drives, RAID lives up to it's name: Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. True, no hot swap, and they're not as fast as SCSI, but for a consumer board (and even non-mission-critical low-end servers), IDE-RAID is the way to go.
Then, there's the advantage of not having to put an older ATA/66 drive on the same channel as an ATA/133 drive. Or, to be able to split up your CD-ROM drive and your CD-RW to make disc to disc copying faster and more reliable. Or, put your swap drive on a different channel (and RAID it!) to give it more bandwidth.
I can think of many more uses for 5 IDE channels (assuming 2 ports to a channel) than I can for 6 USB ports (wouldn't a USB hub be just as effective), or for 2 Firewire ports (let's see...DV camera, and...uh...)
TRUE geeks know how to get X Windows working without the latest and greatest.
Poverty ain't the issue. It's the fact that any kid can go down to the local store and buy the latest shit every week. That's fucking lame. Get an old box working well, and that's fucking cool.
TRUE geeks buy hardware 'cause it's new and 'cause it lets you do more things faster.
Actually, true geeks design their own hardware from the circuit level up.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
You want more USB ports, get a USB hub, they're cheap, their easy, and they work fine. I have 2 USB ports on my computer, one is broken, I got a 4 port USB hub, so now I can plug in my printer, scanner, CF/SM card reader, and my MP3 player. If I need more ports, I'll go get another hub, or a bigger (8 port) hub. USB has been designed this way so you wouldn't need that many ports on the computer.
More firewire ports would be better. I've never seen a firewire hub, and if they are out there, they're probably expensive.
Free Mac Mini
Here's a link to ABIT's media sheet on the motherboard, which gives a good rundown of the new features of the board, as well as what they were thinking when designing it.
ABIT MAX Media Sheet
What about the money you throw away everytime you have to lose a hard drive?
"marginal increase in access time or transfer rate. "
the difference between the newest IDE and the newest SCSI is far more then marginal. And God help you if you want to access more then 2 devices at a time.
If you don't believe me, go ahead and compare a 3.9 ms SCSI drive to a 3.9ms IDE drive..oh wait, they don't exist.
As someone who has written low levely IDE and SCSI code, I can assure there are many benifits with SCSI then the access time.
The cosr isn't that much higher, and if there were a lot of mobos manufactured with SCSI, there would be no price difference.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Extra hundreds? Where are you buying your computer parts? I just bought a brand new, shrink wrapped Ultra Wide SCSI adapter for $25. It supports 15 SCSI devices, any number of which can be internal or external. And it only uses one IRQ.
Not that you would _want_ to put 8 drives in a RAID 0 array. The chances of failure and total data loss are just too high. But it's cool that you can.
12 friggin' IDE channels. The mind boggles. Perhaps I can finally use up all the bays in my full-size tower. It looks mighty pathetic with just my CDRW and a floppy.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
ATM I have TV card, Sound Card, and NIC in my system; sure, this system's got on board NIC and sound, but so what? I have an SB Live that'll beat most on board stuff (well, maybe, I'm not a great fan of Live's anymore :), and needing another NIC isn't that unlikely; 3 is definately going to feel cramped.
I want to congratulate the company on making a motherboard that is virtually useless to anybody who isn't bleeding edge. I don't even have a single USB device, and I still use ISA cards extensively because they'er so damn cheap.
I used to do that. Then I decided that I'd rather not have to beat my head against a wall mucking with IRQ conflicts and port addresses to save $10.
USB keyboards are dirt cheap. USB mice are dirt cheap. If you're shelling out for a new system in the first place, replacing keyboards and mice are a negligeable cost (and you'd want new ones regardless, so that you can still keep the old machine active).
Graphics-wise, I'd have to be paid a lot of money to go back to using a graphics card obsolete enough to be ISA, even if all I'm doing is running a 2D desktop. Network-wise, PCI network cards are *almost* as dirt-cheap as your keyboard and mouse.
In summary: If you're buying a new motherboard at all, you can afford to upgrade the peripherals.
What I don't get is the use of the word "devices". I thought you could put like 10 devices on a single USB port, assuming there's enough juice to power them all?
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
Dude, I think he was referring to the price of the disks themselves. a 40 GB SCSI hard disk is at about $400, but the same size IDE drive is only $80. So what if the adapters are cheap? Its the drives that are expensive.
Platinum Networks Hosting www.platinum-networks.com
It also has 2 usb2.0 ports, which are 480 mbps, faster than firewire.
RAID SCSI doesn't rock? Why does a consumer even need raid? if you are serious enough about HD speed to learn RAID, then you should be going SCSI. really, this is just an expensice way to try to get the advantages of SCSI.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Quoth the review:
It is FINALLY time to get rid of that old mouse... While you're at it, toss out that old Dot Matrix printer, and even the $13 keyboard with the ASDFJKL: keys completely rubbed off!
Ya know, I really like my peripherals. I have a great Gateway Programmable keyboard that has built-in hardware macros (so it's not OS dependant) and a slick logitech trackball that fits my hand well. My printer is pretty crummy, but it has this great ability to turn text into physical paper, which is all I need.
Having a motherboard which boasts of the ability to make me buy new hardware isn't quite what I'm looking for.
Sam
"I wish it had even more built-in USB ports, but six is a good start"
Am I the only one with so many wires connected to their PC that it looks like a plate of spaghetti? 4 ports is more than enough on the computer after that I found it's better to use a hub. I have one on the other desk where my printer and scanner are and one by the keyboard for my MP3 player and Digital Camera.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
ISA??! hey, the 1980's called... it wants its computer back. :-P
my other computer is your Windows(tm) box...
Mod parent up you wankers
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Given that it throws away all legacy ports, I'd say it's pretty short in USB ports. One ofr the keyboard. One for the mouse. One for the printer. So, that leaves you with exactly one USB port (I'm discounting the two USB 2.0 ones). When you throw away your old keyboard and mouse, keep around that old USB hub. You might need it. As for the three PCI slots: Video capture card, decent sound card, SCSI ports. There goes my scalability, I guess....
Well the USB 2.0 ports are backwards compatible and the mouse can and should be chained from the keyboad so yes you have a lot of free ports.
Most keyboards have two extra ports I use one for my mouse and one for my camera.
As for the pci slots the onboard sound looks fine to me.
It has optical ins for god sakes. What more do you want?
It also has an onboard nic card and that saves you another slot.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
onboard sound is traditionally, crap.
I don't know why, it doesn't have to be. My SOYO DRAGON onboard sounds sucks hind tit.
at least onboard nics have been getting better.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually with certain drive kits, IDE can be made to be hot swappable. Do a google search of hot swap and ide and check it out.
Excuse me, but not having PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports is totally ridiculous: come on, I have a great old keyboard (first-gen MS natural, with the 'bigger' keys) that works perfectly and is not manifactured anymore and a great Logi mouse (forget the model, not manifactured anymore either) and I would have to throw them away just to use this M/B? No way!
And let's not even talk about my laserjet printer (which works *great* but is, obviously, parallel).
And what's the deal with no gameport connector (for MIDI)? Why should I pay twice for the onboard sound and for a creative card to hook up my MIDI gear? Not to mention some people that have hundreds of $$ invested in non-USB HOTAS setups.
I don't like backwards compatibility at all costs, and I like the idea of having some firewire ports and some extra USB ones (even if IMHO USB hubs are a much better idea, I can connect/disconnect things on my desk instead of having to crawl behind the computer) but removing things like keyboard/mouse connectors and parallel ports goes really too far.
-- the cake is a lie
Does anyone have a mirror of the article or even some photos of this board, the review seems to be slashdotted already. I can't wait to see how they managed to cram *12* ide connectors on the mobo! But very cool all the same. Funny thing about IDE, does anyone even use the lame-o "slave" drive on each chain? With all of the controllers/connectors on modern boards, I don't know anyone that doesn't just have a single "master" drive on each channel.
Thankfully I work with FibreChannel and SCSI at work... but with 12 IDE channels on a single board, I think I could "suffer" with IDE!!!! Schweet!
I thinks it actually somthing like 127 or 255 devices per USB port. It's hard to imagine what you'd do with that many devices sharing 11Mbps though...
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Can anyone guess how successful a Linux installation would be on such a motherboard? (Without even a PS/2 keyboard port, I'm wondering if the RedHat installer would even talk to you, without a lot of hacking and customization.)
Removing all legacy ports seems a bit silly, to me; it takes so little to provide serial and parallel ports, they're usually integrated into some other multi-purpose I/O chip these days anyway. Sure, don't bother to have the full port on the mother board (just hook up a ribbon cable to some pins, if you need to break out the port), and allow people to disable it. But completely removing it would limit it's utility to some folks. I picked up a little motherboard recently which had no ports mounted, but everything (VGA, serial, parallel, game, sound, etc.) could be hooked up via ribbon cable to a little breakout connector. Saved a lot of space on the motherboard, but still gave you the functionality you might need.
(In fact, a lot of the same folks who would get excited about the built-in raid, are the same folks who still need serial ports to talk to routers and switches and stuff.)
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I'm not understanding what's wrong with having extra keys on the keyboard. I have my windows keys mapped to Meta and Multi_key, and it's nice to map the windows key to pop up my enlightenment menu.
I even mapped all of the new "internet" keys on the top of my keyboard, and have a few of the set for quick access to a terminal.
You know, Apple got rid of legacy ports a loooooong time ago (at least in computer-time). Of course, I am still a fan of legacy ports (where would all of my cool old hardware plug in?), but this doesn't seem groundbreaking on the grand scheme of things. Heck, Sun even went all USB on their SunRay appliances. Yeah, they aren't "real computers" but still. But, alas, the world is dominated by "innovation" from Intel and Micros~1, so until they do it, it hasn't been done. (like the "first optical mouse" that Micros~1 came up with a couple years ago - what do you call the optical Sun mouse I have that has "1992" stamped on the bottom of it?)
Posted from the wireless couch.
That's completely asinine. If you are running a mobo with that poor of a design, maybe you need to start spending more money on your PC parts. Most boards will let you turn off integrated components AND reclaim their reserved interupts. I'm running an older Abit with a KT133A and a built-in HighPoint 100 Raid controller. I don't need the built-in raid functions so I disabled it. I have no problems using other cards on the interrupts, as I have the ability to manually select what each IRQ and DMA is allocated to. That's a good design. It's also rock solid, only crashes when I do something retarded like boot up Win98 :-0
One thing you are right about, built-in components cost a lot of money. More than just 5 or 10 dollars. Look at high end dual proc boards; many times the only difference between them is a nice builting SCSI raid card and $100.
USB doesn't suck, it's more flexible. It just requires more software support and it seems the Linux USB support isn't quite *there* yet.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
How is this innovative when apple has been including all this stuff in their mobos for quite a while now?
no. /. and rant about MPAA while running out to watch LOTR.
A true geek plays quake, buys clothing from think geek, hangs out at
What you are sir, is a nerd.
be proud, you actually know something about technology.
It's sad that the term geek has lost all meaning, but thats what happens when something becomes "hip"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
haha, you got me there. but believe me, my spelling would not improve with a new keyboard.
I had to re-learn how to talk when I was 6, that screwed up my spelling forever.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, us Linux folks had their usb mouse detected during their last installation of RedHat 7.2, so quit yer complaining get a newer kernel.
Hell, I was even using a usb mouse _before_ the 2.4 series.
I can almost see dropping a floppy drive, but a ps2 keyboard and mouse? I use a USB keyboard and mouse on my laptop, but it does take a fair bit more CPU cycles to use the USB version over the ps2. Mind you, a few seconds longer to boot weblogic is not a huge deal, but like those silly winmodems - why waste it on something like a keyboard and mouse? It is not like this board is headed for "almost embedded" solutions like the 170mmx170mm mainboards I plan to toss in my car.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Actually, true geeks photomask and etch their own silicon. Careful with the HF, now.
Actually, extra firewire ports are redundant, unless of course, you mean more firewire controllers... You can have 63 devices on a controller, you can daisy chain them without major performance issues (the only case of it not being the best idea to daisy chain em that I have heard of is when you are doing software raid, each drive on its own controller gives optimum performance).
Considering that USB2.0 is a completely different ball park, which I know nothing about. BTW before people start saying that USB2.0 will kill firewire, remember that it is probably not going to appear in a major market anytime soon: Digital Video Cameras. Sony pretty much leads the pack in this, and the high end stuff has had them for a while (actually, before apple started the whole imovie thing).
Still astonished that I would ever hear a pc review magazine say that 3 pci slots is not enough (after hearing them lambast apple for making machines with only 3. BTW, they have 4, 64bit, 33mhz pci slots now)
This is really disappointing. Just when I thought I found the right board to replace the P2B-LS in my HTPC. But...
Bzzzrt.
I still need more than 3PCI slots, even with the cool I/O on this mobo.
I need:
HiPix Card (HD Tuner Card)
Gig Ethernet (You try shuffling 16GB movies in HD around)
SCSI (DDS-4 for offline storage of said HD movies)
And it's full. No possibility of adding the next cool thing. I'd have to use an AIW if I wanted to use dScaler for DVDs, etc. etc.
Seems like omitting SCSI and GigE were severe oversights.
-Z
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
Sure, there's not much difference in price.. really..
Check out pricewatch, here's a sample:
~40 gig
Scsi: $124
IDE: $54
~80 gig
scsi: $443
IDE: $90
160 gig IDE: $197
$180 gig SCSI: $999
Nope, not much price difference there.
I want a lot of storage space, so I bought a mobo with onboard raid. This is not so that I can quickly access a large amount of information, but so that I have somewhere to store all kinds of crap (MP3's, etc).
I also use the extra IDE slots so that I can have more stuff in there (DVD rom, cd-jutebox, CD-RW, windows drive, BSD drive, etc).
I'm not going for speed, I'm going for bulk. So yeah, I could upgrade to SCSI. I'd spend a crap-load of money and not really gain anything, since I don't do anything that is IO heavy. Everything I do is CPU/Memory heavy. SCSI doesn't help me there.
SCSI has its place, but I don't need it. I'm happy with my ability to stick a bunch of IDE drives into my computer and play with it like that. I have a board with 4 IDE channels, 2 1/2 of which I use. I don't need SCSI.
"All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening."
- Alexandar Woolcot
BTW, they're just selling the motherboard, not the case.
+1 - Zing!
Synergy is your friend
Hey, if you can make your PII 250 work as good as my Athlon 1.4, THEN maybe I have some learning to do.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
So go write some decent USB drivers for Linux, and GPL them so the non-coder g33ks can have some fun!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I don't know where you're getting your information, but all 3 common USB host controllers (UHCI, OHCI and EHCI) use bus mastering DMA to transfer the data from the device to main memory.
Go check the USB host controller specs for yourself.
For what reasons is Windows 98 not supported? For the same reasons as Windows 98 won't run, will {Linux,{Free,Net,Open}BSD} be affected? They do not go into any detail on this whatsoever.
What's wrong with my old ball mouse? It works. Why should PS/2 keyboards and mice be replaced by USB? It seems overkill, especially for keyboards, where things should always work, even if your OS is having problems seeing your USB controller. With USB, too many things can break, and leave your system in a hard-to-fix state. (Ever added 'usb-uhci' instead of 'usb-ohci' to /etc/modules, or equivalent? Many OSs don't have USB support in the installer; Debian doesn't at least, and I don't think any of the BSDs do. Does the BIOS emulate an AT interface for USB keyboards?) More importantly, new eras of computing have little to do with shedding "legacy" devices. New eras of computing are set in software ideology and design. Even as far as hardware goes, new eras of computing would be more akin to a next generation of processor, or a new archetecture in CPUs or busses enabling more than 16 IRQ lines. That last sentence seems very marketroid.
The "consumer" market doesn't use 12 IDE devices. The high-end hobbyist/server/gaming markets do. I think it's a shame they left out SCSI, which seems inconsistent with trying to shed "legacy devices". SCSI is great. Why are you thanking them?
I use rounded cables (that I make myself) to improve airflow and increase the ease of routing/positioning cables inside my cases. I don't care about how they look. And no, I didn't know of a reason IDE cables are flat, besides conventional manufacturing techniques in use. Too bad you don't explain why, because the first thing I'd do with these cables is use a razor blade to slice them into segments, and bunch the segments together with zip-ties, as I would any other flat cable.
Uh huh. I take it these MediaXP panels are specific to Abit and their licensees. How much are you being paid by Abit again?
Comparing "dog poo to cat poo"? Maybe you meant comparing apples and oranges. "Ugh"? The reviewer seems to have come straight from the AOL chat rooms... Okay, so I say "ugh" from time to time, but you don't use that word in a written review. That's fairly unprofessional.
One more gripe, but somewhat offtopic: at the bottom of every page, I'm told to use IE 5+ and a 1024x768x32-bit screen. There is no excuse for bad web design that depends on a specific browser configuration like this. </pissyrant>
OK, this is a neat board, (10 EIDE devices and 6 USB!) but look at what the current Mac has had for a while:
2 x Firewire
4 x USB (2 on the keyboard)
4 x PCI
Modem
Gigabit Ether
Audio
Video
(Airport) (currently optional)
See ADB or DB25 SCSI anyywhere there?
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Not to mention that I have yet to see a 10/100-base-T ISA ethernet card that could actually compete with a PCI card, and lets not forget 1000BT..
.
By the Big Power Switch do you mean the one on your case or the one on your Power Supply?
Only because, I don't care how Borg it is, there's no way it should be able to stay on when you turn the power supply off.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
That's funny, my motherboard can support 256 USB devices. I think what they mean as that the mobo has a build in hub.
Most people won't use more then four or five USB devices. Whats really cool here is the firewire.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
the difference between the newest IDE and the newest SCSI is far more then marginal.
That's right,- at least if you are talking about the price tag.
188 GB SCSI: $999,-
160 GB IDE: 197,-
And God help you if you want to access more then 2 devices at a time.
Exactly why it is nice to have a board with more than 2 IDE controllers. As long as you hook all devices to their own controller, there's no problem accessing more than 2 devices, which you should know, I know as someone who just finished writing a UltraDMA driver for a custom OS.
If you don't believe me, go ahead and compare a 3.9 ms SCSI drive to a 3.9ms IDE drive..oh wait, they don't exist.
And this is where a RAID controller kicks in.
So take your SCSI elitism and buy your drive for 5 times what it should cost. All the best.
indeed.
:/
I've sworn off Abit boards for the moment. but I'll give them credit where it's due, they REALLY do know how to lay out a board sensibly.
If only they could build them properly too.
127 devices per USB bus. This thing has atleast 3 busses.
The USB 1.1 bus is 11Mbps (per bus), whereas the USB 2.0 bus is 480Mbps.
A $15 ps/2 -> usb dongle. Keep your old Model-M -- or, in my case, my $250 Kinesis Classic. PS/2 was a shitty stupid idea when it was introduced, and it's no less stupid now. I'm happy to see it go away.
(jfb)
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
1) This board sucks! How am I supposed to connect my [10 year old piece of hardware] when there isn't a [PS2/Serial/Parallel/AT/ISA/Microchannel] [port/slot]?!?!? This can't POSSIBLY be for people building a new computer from the ground up, because, dammit, that's not what I do, so obviously no one else does either! And speaking of [10 year old piece of hardware], aren't I so 1337 for still using it? I thought so.
2) [SCSI/IDE] rocks! [IDE/SCSI] sucks!
3) Natalie Portman pours hot grits down my pants. Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
What exactly is it? I know the review briefly described it, but I was looking for something more detailed. Googling for "MediaXP" doesn't return any significant hits. What's up?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I have tried many USB devices. I have a MS Intellimouse Explorer that can be USB or PS/2, and a MS Natural Keyboard Pro that can also be USB or PS/2. My grand master plan a while ago was to get rid of some of the legacy stuff in my PC so that I wouldn't have so many cables in the back, makeing it easier to make it look better, to unplug for upgrades, etc. Well, I tried it for about 1 day and went back to PS/2. Why? Because the thing I use my PC for more than anything else is gaming, and I could notice the delay in response between a USB keyboard and mouse and having them on the PS/2 ports, even when they were the only USB devices in the system. If I had the bios make them act like PS/2 devices, instead of windows, it was still noticeable. 100+ FPS in games like Quake 3 and Counter Strike is useless if your mouse/kb doesn't update fast or consistantly. Sure, when I need a mouse on my laptop, USB is great. When I need to borrow my mom's color ink jet instead of our network attached laser printer, it's great too. But when I need fast response time for killing that AWP whore, I'll take PS/2 any day. Frankly, I'm disappointed in USB, I'm still waiting for it to make my life easier.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I agree with you. Often onboard sound chips cause problems with linux even though they can be turned off in the BIOS. It'd be nice to just have a motherboards with a bunch of pci ports and a bunch of usb ports.
Got friends?
And, no, sometimes you can't just turn these features off in the BIOS. Even worse, sometimes there's no way to reclaim the IRQs that are lost due to integrated functions! Check out some of the really bad implementations out there. It's a nightmare trying to make those poorly designed boards work.
<RANT>
I have to concur on this. My dad bought a Soyo K7V Dragon Plus! with onboard RAID. I configured the RAID and everything was working flawlessly until one day the RAID JUST STOPPED WORKING! It decided that the 2nd drive just was not connected. I wasted a whole weekend and lost a lot of data trying to get it working again. A week later my Dad noticed a little blurb in the documentation about not putting a SCSI card in PCI slot 2 because the IRQ on that slot is shared with the RAID. Well, there was no SCSI card in slot 2, but as it turns out the RAID broke(i didn't realize it at the time) right after I rearranged some PCI cards and ended up putting a FireWire card in slot 2. NICE F#$%#KING design, slot 2 is completly useless on that board if you are using RAID. What good are all these features if they don't WORK TOGETHER?
</RANT>
Modern "legacy-free" computers work just fine with USB keyboards and mice, and if you don't like new mice, get a USB-to-serial converter to support your antique Logitech. The Firewire and USB2 mean you can plug in fast external devices, either inputs like video cameras or storage devices, and and as a bonus you can refill your MP3 player from the 3 YEARS OF CONTINUOUS MP3s it can hold :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If you had ever tried to build your own little hobbyist PCB shop, you'd either be laughing at how stupid your statement just sounded, or crying that it's out of your reach. Damn, what I wouldn't give, to be able to mask even 8k roms.
I don't think so - I rather have intergrated components - as long as they work well (which in the case of my A7V-266E they do). For one thing it saves a whole lot of time and headache - because you know they tested it and its going to work most of the time.
:).
Not to mention this board - you can just buy it, plop a video card and a hard disk drive and your done - pc built
So their reasoning for having the jumpered-out ports is a little different; so you can plumb in the upgrade card to an old PC. But the effect is good for those who choose to use it as a single board computer
The unit is pretty amazing; it has 3D graphics, sound, up to 1G memory, 1ghz procsesor, sound, game port, three serial, parallel, PS/2 mouse & keyboard, *four* USB, dual IDE, and probably some other goodies I'm forgetting. All on a PCI card sized unit.
The pricing was very good; check out powerleap's store for details. (Mine was the 370S.)
(Mine actually came with a broken CPU fan, but they assure me a new one is en-route.) I'll probably do up a review for
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Wow, there's a fan on the KT333 chipset! I'd think with all the legacy stuff they removed, they wouldn't need a fan. The KT333 actually still has all the legacy functionality in it which might be why they need the fan.
Got friends?
Should have spent an extra $20, and got a fibrer channel adapter on ebay.
It supports 127 devices without getting fancy, and 65,000 or so, if you have the cash for decent FC hubs or switches.
$1 per gig, for smaller drives. Some hubs are under $300 on ebay. 200mps of bandwidth. You can use STP cat5.
I am to you, what you are to these weenies getting hardons over IDE... I am Ubergeek.
Most people don't use them, and they make the board and box far bigger. A no-slot version would be useful for a little-box-under-the-flatpanel-monitor form factor.
An excerpt from Abit's MAX FAQ:
WHAT IS MAX?
Charlie, lead designer of the AT7: "I'm glad you asked me that. MAX is a mother board with a legacy-free device interface, maximized CPU performance and memory capacity, on-board LAN, 6 Channel Audio, USB 2.0 and IEEE1394a..."
MAX: "Blah, blah, blah. Anybody can tell that by reading the specsheet! I'm more than a bunch of interfaces and memory slots! Without tooting my own horn, I'm everything anybody could possibly ever want in a computing system. I'm like the beautiful girlfriend you've always wanted who also cooks, cleans, mows the lawn, pays the bills AND lets you play CS all night-- if that's what you want."
Charlie: "Well, I guess you could put it that way..."
BUT WHY MAX?
Charlie: "Good question. MAX fully utilizes system bandwidth and provides the best storage management currently available in a motherboard. Combine that with all the fully integrated extra features, and you have the ultimate integrated computer platform."
MAX: "Charlie, We know that already. What people want to know is why would they want MAX. Well, the answer is, `cause I'll make your life easier, giving you more time to spend at the beach, or playing MOH: AA till your wrist seizes up and your brain melts."
Charlie: "We didn't think of that whenwe included all the integrated extra features, but I suppose you're right."
MAX: "Of course I'm right! I'm ABIT Engineered!"
Charlie: "Before MAX interrupted me, I was going to mention that MAX users will have the best platform solution in the market, with the best design for users thanks to ABIT Engineering. Because MAX includes just about all the integrated features users will need in a motherboard, MAX is designed for now and the future."
MAX: "That's right Charlie. I'm gonna be around for a long time...like Gandalf."
All I can say is: Wow. That's the most horrible thing I've ever read.
I have an i810-based computer, and currently am using the on-board audio. Thing is, there is so much crosstalk from other devices on the motherboard like the IDE lines and so on that unless you are pumping high-volume sound around you still hear little subtle pings and hisses.
I have heard that with the Nforce-based all-in-one motherboards the problem has pretty much been licked. However, I will not believe it until I hear it with my own ears.
Meanwhile, I'm saving my pennies for an Audigy... unless Turtle Beach comes out with an audio card with a firewire port on it.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
IRQ12, which is usually for the PS/2 Mouse, is probably the only interrupt that can be reclaimed. IRQ5 can probably be used by the on board sound.
If you can't reclaim the resources, then dropping the connectors on the back is a step backwards, not a step forwards. And they probably can't reclaim the IRQ's because it would break compatibility with everything out there.
Cryptnotic
My other first post is car post.
I think PC's lose their usefulness without paralle ports. If your trying to interface some simpel device you've made who wants to bother with USB interfaces and UARTs and stuff. Just read and write to the memory mapped parallel port. Its so easy! whay would I do with this?
I suppose not buy it, but still. . .
What kind of devices use the 64bit slots?
64 bit is very handy when more than one PCI slot is sharing a PCI bus... most PC and Mac mobos only have one PCI bus, shared by 3-5 slots. GigE NICs, SCSI cards, lab/data acquisition boards, uncompressed HD video interface cards, etc... most high end, high-thruput PCI cards have 64-bit and/or 66 MHz options to take advantage of wider (64-bit) or faster (66 MHz) busses. Heard the buzz about PCI-X? Just a fancy name for 64-bit, 133 MHz PCI that's starting to become popular on server boards.
Of course RAID SCSI rocks! The price is outrageous for the performance, however. And consumers don't need the added reliability of a SCSI drive, or hot swap, RAID 5, etc. But, since the HDD is still the slowest part of a modern system, it only makes sense to increase the performance of it.
Learn RAID? What's there to learn? We're not talking rocket science or programming here....Increases speed, can increase reliability, does away with different drive letters for smallish drives...what's not to love?
No, SCSI is just an expensive way to get the advantages of IDE-RAID. SCSI RAID is an extremely expensive way to blow some serious cash. In a consumer environment, at least. SCSI in midrange servers is, IMO, a requirement.
Good point. TBU's are pretty outrageous, especially when you start looking at backing up today's monstrous hard drives to a single tape (or autoloader). IDE tape drives are more reasonably priced, though. I can't say I'd recommend them though. They're a good bit slower and more prone to failure than SCSI units, in my experience.
Lucky for me, I get to keep old TBU's from customers. :) I use 1 DDS-2 (10/20GB) and 1 DDS-3 (12/24GB) SCSI TBU's to back myself up, so I can use RAID for performance and still not worry too much.
AGP = TNT2
PCI 1 - DVD decoder
PCI 2 - Sound Card
PCI 3 - Ultra ATA controller
PCI 4 - Capture card
PCI 5 - NIC
PCI 6 - Modem
All cards working fine, thank you very much. It's not hard to do. If you can't fill 6 PCI slots and get the cards working correctly then I would wonder about your actual computer knowledge.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
The Abit KR7a with 4 RAM slots has ram issues which cause it to give memtest86 errors. This has been hypothesised to be caused by the non-standard amount of ram slots. This was a huge source of grief for me, and I eventually returned the board and had to get credit for the store. As this board also has 4 RAM slots, I would watch out for this board. I will never buy Abit products again because of their extremely high RMA rate.
Please follow this link for details on the problem.
Or if you want to see the true low-end hardcore:
http://www.lowendmac.com/
I have nothing but admiration for people who keep old machines alive, particularly when they spread their technological wealth around. Which reminds me: I will be decommissioning one of my machines soon. It was built in 1997 and was a real science experiment, hence the name it's held on my network, "Dexter." In fact, I brought the case cover to a comic convention and Genndy Tartakovsky drew his mad scientist character on it and autographed it for good measure.
Dexter has been useful for all these years, and it's only because I have some new stuff coming in that I have to reluctantly decommission it. I'm keeping an eye out for a deserving new home for the thing. The scanner is going out the door too...it's an UMAX 600P and it is not supported in any OS beyond 98SE. SANE doesn't support it and UMAX doesn't make a 2K or XP driver for it either. It also barfs if connected to a computer with a processor that runs at or above 300MHz. Timing prob. Still works like a champ, too.
This machine will be going to the Pacoima Community Center or somewhere else deserving.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Does anybody know of any GOOD front mount USB devices for a 5.25" bay? I DO NOT WANT one that includes a 5.25" to 3.5" adaptor, I have ENOUGH 3.5" bays in my full tower case, I just want to be able to plug in massive USB devices to the front of my computer. . . .
.
Bleh.
:(
The ONLY solution to this problem that I have been able to figure out so far would be to mount a regular old USB hub in one of the bays with some screws and some very careful drilling into the Hub itself (I have found some Hubs that are of about the right size and would fit in a 5.25" bay just nicely) but this is far from optimal. . .
I mean WTF am I supposed to do with a shitpot load of USB ports AND NO DAMN WAY TO ACCESS THEM. Well except for from behind my case, but already I have WAAAY to many wires back there and it is a royal pain in the arse to have to reach back around behind my computer and try and grope for something remotly resembling a USB port to plug some device in to. . . . It would be nice to be able to actualy see the port. ^_^
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Argh. So many "legacy" ports got rid of...nice.
Now, how about updating the bios, so that ALL the old ports are emulated? To the extent that DOS 5.0 will still install from scratch and run?
Having a USB device is nice, but HARDWARE IS HARDWARE. They should function all by themselves with only the BIOS (think "safe mode"), and not only when some OS-supplied drivers are run.
How else do people fix things when the drivers break?
BeyondLogic has information on programming USB. It's more difficult than serial, but if you really want to program serial/parallel it's a good idea to get a hold of a port replicator. I had one from PortSmith that turned a USB port into serial, parallel, and PS/2 ports. Worked great, I would have used it if I didn't have all this legacy junk on my system.
What do you think of MusicCity now?
They claim they support ECC SDRAM, but they don't. Their motherboards run ECC SDRAM, but don't actually use the ECC hardware. See http://cr.yp.to/hardware/abit.html
I *do* know what an AST Rampage is, and trust me, you're better off if you never have to find out! :)
:)
For the younger set, it was a memory card of the XT and 286 era, that with a matching driver provided an early version of EMS. In the days of memory chips socketed on the motherboard (generally 512k or 640k, but sometimes as much as 4mb), that's how you got beyond a given mobo's onboard memory limit. Most such cards were 8bit, tho high-end models were 16bit. They typically used very slow memory chips (up to 200ns).
I have a BocaRAM card in my (t)rusty 286, to total a whopping 3 megs of RAM.
And don't feel bad, I'm typing this on a lowly P233, and it works just fine too.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
[laughing] After reading this thread, I am REAL tempted to break out my XT (yes, I still own a working XT), install NetTamer on it, and post to Slashdot that way. :)
To some degree, you're right -- the real test of geekdom is the ability to make stuff WORK, even old stuff if that's the current need. And sometimes the old stuff works BETTER -- but we've gotten used to the cranks of the new stuff and have forgotten how simple it was to merely move a jumper instead of argue with a PnP device that has weird ideas about what resources it wants to hog, and can't be taught different.
To quote an old saw -- There are two kinds of fools: The first says "This is old, and therefore good." The second says "This is new, and therefore better."
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
To be honest, I've yet to get one right. But ferric chloride is the scapegoat I'm using. That, and etchant tanks, seriously looking at building a spray etcher, with persulfate.
Won't hurt when I have proper copper electroplating tanks, so that I can do real vias.
Or a proper cnc drill.
Or a laminator, so that I can do pretty soldermasks.
Or a press, so that I can do multilayer.
I just need to win the lottery, that's all.
Amen. Geeks suck. I'm sick and tired of hearing about "geeks" who are great people because they can do drugs and get laid like all the other idiots on campus. I'd much rather be a sober nerd who can integrate the equations in the back of the book, and who gets married to the first woman he lays.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Overstated, because, even with 4 USB 1.1 ports, when you take out the PS/2 ports, then your mouse and keyboard will inevitably go into one of those, bringing the number down to 2.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
One thing I hate about these supposed hardware sites is the lack of kernel compile times. Lets face it GCC is the best benchmark tool ever made. Period the end, indisputable... you cannot argue that! Anyways... I sure would like to see a real benchmark site one of these days. I'm sure they exist, but I don't' see those listed on /. very much. I did notice the raid chip doesn't support level 5, but does support 0+1 raid.. and that actual faster, but more expensive to get into. Oh well... I guess we should all expect to replace our old serial keyboards with the new serial keyboards (aka USB, etc..). My SGI boxes at work all have USB terminal connects... when will the rest of the hardware world catch up?
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Honestly, I can't stand USB mice. I do like my USB keyboard, but every time I use the USB mouse under high load, my pointer gets laggy. To heck with that. I'd vastly prefer legacy for at least that -one- peripheral where the responsiveness of an interrupt driven input device is actually meaningful.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Gotta love Asus. I had an MSI K7T266 Pro2 die on me after two months. Just replaced it with an Asus A7V333-R. Hopefully it'll last as long as my old P2B-S did (4 years and still going).
This new asus is pretty sweet too. Most of the good parts of this Abit board (4 USB1.1, 4 USB2.0, 1 FireWire, 2 IDE, 2 IDE RAID, 5.1 sound), and still has 2 PS/2, 2 serial, 1 parallel, and 5 PCI slots.
Carpe Cerevisi - Seize the Beer
Actually, I think that is the board. I've had it for two or three years now. Works flawlessly. With updated Via 4in1 drivers for Win98, it works great under windows. Unfortunately, I'm bound to Windows because of work. I have to use SolidWorks and 3dStudio Max 4, both Windows only.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Hotplugging is very important. It's one of the most touted features of USB. It works most of the time.
My only really serious problem was getting my Epson 777 usb printer to work. I tried newsgroups, and getting support but I couldn't make it work. It's a nice printer, with built-in support for text. That's why I thought it was weird that it wouldn't work, because even set up as a generic text printer, it still wouldn't work. Oh well...
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
So that people would pay more attention when plugging in their mice and keyboards. In the old days, people just reached around and plugged 'em in by feel. This made computer guys look bad, because easy == lazy == bad.
So they changed it so that your chances are a cointoss unless your turn the machine around and look at the damned colors or shine a light on it. Hard == hard working == good.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
YES, VIA may have the best performance for the Athlon platform right now.
And YES, the VIA chipset boards would be slightly cheaper than nForce boards with similar bells and whistles.
But nobody, and I mean NOBODY but the true DIY masochists WILLINGLY put up with a VIA chipset!
Their service history of the last few chipsets can't exactly be described as "rock solid" here.
k around the hardware message boards for a while. Look at the people who are having problems with their Athlon-based systems. The top three problems are:
Now don't get me wrong. Other chipsets have their own issues as well. But how many of the chipset makes have the high running tally of problems that VIA has had?
I, and many other builders, ESPECIALLY those building for other people's systems, would rather pay a little bit more, and settle for slightly lower performance than deal with a VIA product.
VIA simply needs to work on improving their track record for a while before any serious builders are comfortable with them again.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on ME!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
They should have gotten rid of the floppy port and the IDE (use scsi).
The board is not as big a leap as apple made in the iMac.
as posted in a reply below:
pricewatch: ide 75gb $138 scsi 73.5 gb $443
nuff said in my books.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Wow, that's just about a certifiable antique! And was probably a honkin' screamer in its day, too.
I was trying to find my XT a good home (10MHz, 60mb of HD space, VGA -- Trident 8900 ISA cards work fine in an 8bit slot -- and it even knows the right year!) but just as well there were no takers -- while back I needed it to beta-test a fix-util for an old program that's still in wide use. And it's kinda cool to have at least one working system from every major hardware era, eh? :)
I know a guy who still uses his old luggable CP/M machine, because he can't find a more-recent replacement for one particular program that he can't live without.
Personally, I hate to throw out working hardware, no matter how outdated. Besides, old parts sometimes come in handy -- I support several folk with old machines and no money, and they're gradually using up my stock of ancient components. :)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
IDE
160GB x 12 = 1920GB (1.920TB) (Due to HD reporting, it'll actually be about 1.788TB for real.)
Disk System Price: $2400
Options?
SCSI
181.6 x 30 = 5448GB (5.448 TB) (Due to HD reporting, it'll actually be about 5.073TB for real.)
Disk System Price: $30,230 (With DC controller.)
Options?
Basically, it all REALLY depends on what you want to do with the system. That and take a look at any of the recent comparisons between SCSI and IDE drives (especially the aforementioned 120GB WesDig JB drives).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It really depends on your needs.
Fast, cheap, (pretty) reliable.
http://www.bedford.smythco.com/storage/
43Megs/sec write, 128 Megs/sec read. 1.9TB. With IDE. 1/3rd the cost of SCSI. We built two of them for extra reliability and still saved money over SCSI. Even if a whole unit fails, we are still up and running.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I just wondered if anybody knows more about what it came to with Abit's allegded GPL violations. And their Gentus Linux is dead isn't it?
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Quoth the review:
It is FINALLY time to get rid of that old mouse... While you're at it, toss out that old Dot Matrix printer, and even the $13 keyboard with the ASDFJKL: keys completely rubbed off!
Aaarggghhh. If your keyboard doesn't have an H, it's probably time to upgrade!
--- My dad's political betting
What's a motherboard to you? A RAM bank, CPU slot, anda PS/2 port so you can enter the programs to be run?
You've just ranted about how you love 1993 motherboards. So, here's a tip: enjoy your 486. Nowadays, people can integrate extra functionality into a motherboard easily because the manufacturing process is so great. Granted, this has some bad effects (active cooling on the northbridge, usually by way of a cheap fan which fails after a couple months of serwice), but it's better overall for everyone.
Business and most home users don't have to buy expensive cards with features they'll never use to get audio beyond the stupid PC speaker (do you not like how the PC speaker is on every system as well?). USB is a standard, and it's a well implemented standard which lets me easily swap devices around while going between my main work computer and whatever other computer's on the bench without an expensive KVM. Do that with PS/2 without frying some ports. Oops, PS/2's not hotplugable by design! Hov about firewire? Do you have having high speed tranfers? Do you prefer the slow and limited lpt ports instead? Or are those too "damned useless" and shouldn't also be integrated?
Have you looked into a 1993 PC? A mess of cables from all the parts and port headers. A minimum of 4 expansion cards (NIC, sound, video, lpt/serial), and a cost more than any integrated board.
USB is great. Firewire is great. Everything should be hotpluggable on a PC, like it is on a mainframe. It's easier to manage, and easier to fix. Open, large cases with well laid out boards and no nest of wires everywhere. It's a joy to work on.
PS/2 ports just take up backplane space, ditto for the other legacy ports. Except for my main PC, I don't want to spend another 200$ to add sound when I can get a low-cost, general purpose, industry standard sound output from it with an onboard chip.
If the market for such boards wasn't great, I'm sure that they wouldn't be out.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I know - Hindsight is usually pretty damn good - but it's a good point to be made - in general. Be farmiliar with what your dealing with in order to set it up and diagnose properly.
True, sucky design, but you should have known.
USB uses ALOT of cpu usage... is there any sort of usb hub that connects to the computer via a firewire port? firewire deals with devices by itself - no cpu interaction required. by having a usb hub/router on firewire, the hub/router could deal with all that w/o using up precious cpu cycles.
moox. for a new generation.
Think of how much more stable the motherboards would be if there were less chips present and less IRQs being shared.
Uh... you realize that most of the things you just whinged about are all on ONE chip, right? USB, IDE, and sound are all integrated into the south bridge of modern chipsets. The only thing you have to do is throw down traces (and maybe a few pots/resistors) to the physical connector.
As for IRQ sharing - gee... funny thing there... serial, parallel, and PS/2 ports all take up a IRQ each. USB takes up one. Period. Of course, the flip side is that IDE still sucks up an IRQ per channel, so I doubt there's any less IRQ sharing going on with this particular board.
And, no, sometimes you can't just turn these features off in the BIOS. Even worse, sometimes there's no way to reclaim the IRQs that are lost due to integrated functions! Check out some of the really bad implementations out there.
So quit buying bad implementations and then whining about it. I have a variety of mobos from a variety of manufacturers (Abit, Asus, Gigabyte, Iwill) and they all work fine in this regard.
Frankly, getting rid of legacy is good. If we could just be rid of the damn 16-bit BIOS things would be a whole lot better, at least in theory.
Actually, RAID is "redundant array of independent disks."
Not to be confused with RASDA, the Randomly Accessed Shitty Drive Array. This term was coined a couple years ago by myself and some friends when we realized we all had three or four relatively low capacity drives in our systems because we were all too poor to buy new hardware.
--saint
My Belkin F1DS104T disagrees with you. It has PS/2 inputs and four ports of PS/2 or USB (your choice per-port) goodness. It also supports 1600x1200 resolutions at 85Hz without blurring. Oh, yeah - I got it for about $130 from Pricewatch, and I'd consider that to be pretty reasonable for a very high quality piece of hardware that works perfectly 100% of the time.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
4 RAID ATA/133's also non RAID capible and 2 standaed ATA/133. Hmm.. that's only 12 drives, the article said it's aimed at the consumer market because it uses ATA/133 instead of SCSI but who has a case that's going to hold 12 drives? On the plus side anyone that does use that many drives probably has most of the HDD's they've ever owned connectd to the motherboard, many of them before SCSI's time. That's where I think it makes sense to use ATA, no home user is going to go out and buy 12 SCSI drives and it's too early to have them laying around just yet. This does mark a nice milestone and I will someday soon enjoy running a quad RAID 0 system + my two CD drives. Now that the memory clock sppeed has bypassed AMD's FSB and many new chipsets are structured to run them out of sync you will see additional performance for DMA. It's good to see someone finding a use for it.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
The floppy connector.
Which, with all those IDE connectors would have been piss easy to dump.
Afterall IDE floppy drives have been arround for at least 5 years (both the normal 1.4MB type & the 1.4MB/120MB supper floppy type), actually if you search hard enough on the web you can find 5.25" CD-ROM/floopy combo IDE drives (yes they don't just make em for laptops).
Wow!
The last Belkin KVM I owned was a PoS, I don't plan to spend money on them again. But thanks for the info; if they're doing it, certainly someone else will catch on.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Oh how quickly you forget...
having all of the STANDARD components that a VAST MAJORITY of computer users are going to be using integrated on the motherboard, with guaranteed compatability between them is a bad idea. I sure wanna go back to the days when NOTHING was built onto the motherboard and I had to go out and buy my serial/parallel/fdd/hdd controlers and add them onto the board.
And what's the point in bringing up poor implimentations? Integrated hardware or not, you'll still have cut-rate crappy hardware, better to have it integrated so that you have some hope of it working together without catching on fire.
And most integrated hardware these days is fine.. integrated audio is good enough for non-audiophiles. Integrated video good enough for those who aren't demanding gamers. Integrated IDE is good enough for those who don't want to run multi-TB databases. Integrated NICs are good enough unless you have the bandwidth to saturate a 100Mb connection.
Notice a trend here? If the standard integrated componets aren't good enough for your needs you belong to a SMALL NICHE MARKET that has more demanding standards than the vast majority of users, and as such are going to need more expensive high-end hardware. I'm sure you'd like to live in a utopia where everyone had the very best in hardware, but I like being able to buy my father an $800 machine that's got more power than he'll ever need to use.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
I guess to make up for the idiots who post boring, irrelevent, and useless crap, and then whine at full volume when they're modded down.
Now, this post is clearly offtopic! Let's see what happens...