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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)
Now I don't need all 5 of those Promise ATA contollers I've got!
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?
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.
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.
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 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...
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
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!
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.
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
Ouch. I was loving this board until I read that. I hate integrated components. If they die, or if something faster/cooler/better comes out that doesn't leave me enough slots to upgrade, so I have to replace the motherboard. Sorry Abit, you lost my business right there.
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.
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.
"but given that IDE controllers are proven, extremely fast, "
SCSI is also proven, and even faster.
"and a dime a dozen"
I am going to assume your talking about drives because you can get a UWide SCSI controller that supports 15 devices for about 25 bucks.
yes, SCSI disks are more expensive, but a Corvette is more expensive then a camero. you get what you pay for.
Your performance is really going to take a hit if you start loading up the IDE channels. The SCSI performance is not elusive, its proven. I have a cr-rw and a dvd player and 2 hardisks and I can play DVD, burn a cd, and run a compile in the background. My CPU usage hardly rises.
As far as RAID goes, you can RAID SCSI as well.
I suggest you try programming to both, then tell me which one is better.
but hey, you want to use broken SCSI.... i mean, IDE drive, no skin off my nose.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Giving up PS/2 as "legacy" is pretty much insane. There is no reasonably priced KVM switch that does BOTH USB and PS/2, and I'm not getting USB for my 486 firewall any time soon. PS/2 has PLENTY of life left in it, no matter what one mfr thinks.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I'll stick with IDE thanks (despite the hip elusive performance promise of SCSI)
A promise which it makes good on. IDE fulfills the "cheap", and, sometimes the "good" of "cheap, good, and fast. Pick any two." SCSI fulfills "good" and "fast". You really do get what you pay for.
- 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?"
why are PS/2 ports labeled as "legacy"?
Because USB does everything PS/2 does in a more flexable way. It's nice to be able to hook the mouse into my keyboard or the back of the computer or even into a USB hub. Computer makers like USB because it eliminates the need to color-code everything. With PS/2, the tech on the phone always has to think, "did this moron hook the keyboard into the mouse port?"
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
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.
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- Alexandar Woolcot
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.
It's the perfect flight simulator box! Not only are the engine sounds simulated, but the engine exhaust heat is simulated too!
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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.
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.
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. . .
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?
I hate integrated components. If they die, or if something faster/cooler/better comes out that doesn't leave me enough slots to upgrade...
Let's say you put in an Audigy in place of on-board sound.
And a PCI gigabit Ethernet NIC instead of the on-board 10/100.
And a GeForce4 in the AGP 4x slot.
You still have 10 USB ports, two firewire ports, 6 IDE headers (for 12 devices). You can put anything you want in that final PCI slot. Unless you're building a server or a videa-editing center with multiple PCI cards, you're going to be hard pressed to find a way to obsolete this board in the next 48 months.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
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
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!!!
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.