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Simple, Bare-Bones Motherboards?
basic0 writes "After my Windows box recently lost its life in a puff of awful smelling smoke, I tracked the fault to the motherboard. Now I'm in the market for a replacement board, but all the boards I find seem to be all-in-one models with on-board everything. I already have a good graphics card, NIC, USB audio device, etc. I just need a no-frills motherboard like I used to be able to buy. It seems like a waste to buy a board with all the built-in stuff (and probably pay extra for it) when I'm never going to use it. Has anyone else had similar experiences? Do a lot of people actually use the on-board stuff? Is it still possible to purchase a motherboard that's *just* a motherboard?"
You end up paying more for a bare-bones motherboard because of their rarity.
Could it be?
Anyways, I'm in the same boat. I havnt had any luck finding a good motherboard that supports my ram (184 pin RIMM).
If you can read this then I forgot to check "Post Anonymously"
I don't think they're sold anymore, and they're so cheep now that you wouldn't save much, anyway. Just ignore whatever extras come with the board.
In fact, you just might save a few bucks in the long run by using the on-board stuff, since it may use less power than the equivilent slot-based stuff.
Not a typewriter
Motherboards are so cheap nowadays that you may as well buy one and disable all the stuff you're not going to use. I guess it's because they are produced in such numbers, that onboard audio/network chips cost mere pennies. It would probably cost the manufacturer more to sell two products, one without the extras.
if a nic costs £4, and ditto for sound, i wouldnt worry about onboard, since the price is negligable
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
... are cheaper in my experience, since they're geared toward the value market.
quit yer whining and buy a motherboard.
Yea that zemtobit internet is such superfluous addition.
I already have a good graphics card, NIC, USB audio device, etc.
Well you don't want an on-board graphics card. Just ignore that. If you have an on-board NIC you can remove your PCI card and free up a slot. On-board audio is damn good these days. I paid $80 for a gigabyte board with all the on-board shit and I only use on-board NIC & Sound. They aren't very expensive and if you don't like the on-board stuff then don't use it!
Have you metaroderated recently?
Awesome story, again! Google gets DNS jacked and we get to help this fucknut find a motherboard, and it will probably be posted 4 more times this week by timothy and CowboyNeal HOORAY OFR /.
Slashdot sucks
Did you take the time to look for them?
Thank god... one less Windows user out there now. I am sorry to inform you that they no longer make motherboards for Windows as you might as well install Linux or buy a Mac...
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
Yeh, there are a lot of "all-in-one" motherboards out there but a lot of highend ones aren't that bad. Personally I was in a similar boat, I had a great soundcard, video card, network card, etc. I settled on an ASUS who's only integrated component was sound. Finding one without integrated video is pretty easy, just look at the companies websites, reviews, etc. However most are the high-end boards, but they're at most $30 or $50 more than the cheaper modes. Ethernet, SATA, and in some cases sound are a little tough to avoid, but it's not big deal. You can disable the components you don't want, but SATA is nice (if you want/need it) and the Ethernet is just nice to have in general. In any case, it's not that bad. I'm sure by now people have posted a lot of models.
I can't imagine how much you think you would save with motherboards that support all this stuff going for $65.
http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/boards/sx1 500/
good few-frills motherboard. only unneccessary whistle is onboard audio. Unless you consider USB a frill...
-GenTimJS
The problem is to get a reliable system it would require a good chipset (for using 64 bit, PCI express, so on) and there are only a few good ones out there (nvidia, and via makes those) and these just happen to come bloated already with that needless crap and the rest the mother board put simply takes use of that, so you have no choice rather than to get all of that if you want a compatible and still powerful system (since you mention you had other good components). Or you can go for one of the lesser known brandings and chipsets, which will have less performance, compatibility issues. Then again, I might be wrong too.
Its been sucking for a long ass time
Slashdot sucks
Amen to that brother. As long as it took to post to slashdot, the dude could have had a new mobo installed. He is probably the fifteenth person to submit this ask slashdot question anyway, the first 14 being rejected for some reason.
He might also look at www.froogle.com. Pretty fucking amazing how a search engine can find things. These new fangled internet 'sites' are great.
Even in server boards, things still get integrated. Different sets of things (SCSI controllers, low-end video hardware). Reasons? It frees up slots (big +++ in 1U 2U rackmount land), and at the same time drops cost (may be hard to believe, but in the log run it does).
Onboard video is usually pretty terrible (unless you're buying an nForce board), and if you are an audiophile like me, you'll want the 500$ sound card with the 120db DNR:) But in reality, it almost doesn't matter who made your NIC, your USB transcever, etc etc.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
You'll probably spend less by selling your existing cards and going with one that build all that stuff in. That said, the one with everything built in is also going to be less replaceable than an individual card.
Yes barebones motherboards are very rare sight. I gave up looking for a decent one and picked up an ASUS a7n8x-e deluxe.
You work for Apple don't you. "Most professionals are switching ...". Oh please. Most professionals use whatever their employer tells them to use and that's still Windows, like it or don't.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Find a motherboard in your price range and ideally from a quality manufacturer. If it has a bunch of on board stuff simply don't use it. Who cares, as long as it's priced right. If your complaint is that motherboards are too expensive, then I can't help you. They haven't been any cheaper, so suck it up and spend $50 - $100 on a new one.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I recommend Tyan. Many of their run of the mill work station boards dont come with anything other than LAN and sound. Sound seems to be something you cant get away from.
I just purchased a socket 775 PCI Express MB with the 915 chipset. It only has 3 PCI slots with 2 PCI express slots. However, about the only thing that it doesn't have is on-board video.
I plan to use the onboard ethernet, perhaps audio, and such.
While Tom's Hardware Guide has a comparison chart: http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20020422/c hipset-01.html
it appears to be somewhat dated.
The core functionality for most of the onboard components is now built right into the chipset. It costs at most a couple of bucks to add the connectors and the rest of the hardware (a sound codec, ethernet transciever, etc.) needed to fully support it, and the added value is more than that.
A lot of stuff that is now integrated on literally every motherboard used to be an add on card. 10 years ago you would be whining "why do I have to get a motherboard with an IDE controller and onboard parallel ports, I already have a multi-IO card". But things change and for the most part the integrated hardware is adequate, and it isn't economically viable to not provide it.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
That's why most professionals and experts are switching to them.
Would that be... most people in the room with you right now? Most of your friends? I work with 300 people. One of their wives bought a Mac because it was "pretty" and she saw it, literally, in the window at a Mac store in a Virginia shopping mall. Now, there are probably quite a few more Macs in use within that group of people, but I will suggest, right now, that "most" of them have not/are not switching. They are all professionals, and all experts.
Statistics, man! Back this stuff up! Most people sure I'm right, prefer vanilla ice cream, and think George Soros founded the whole Open Soros Movement.
Oh, and on the subject: I think the OP should just throw a dart and buy an all-in-one mobo. He can use the spare NIC to multi-home, and just disable the other stuff. Most of the time, though, the maker's drivers make the install/use a lot simpler than sucking down that extra 10 watts and busying up his expansion slots and hoping all the parts get along nicely.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Because the more you have the more things that can go wrong.
running dual video cards and disabling one of them works, but you never really know what's going on. maybe the driver required to disable that onboard card is what goes puff and loses it's magic.
You should be able to build a computer without extra's if you so choose.
And why do modern boards still have serial and Parralell ports? They aren't used by 75% of the rest of the world, why are they even included as standard on ALL boards? On Some us because they still have some value but ALL?
I am damn glad Mac's have eliminated all the old hardware ports that don't play nice.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
If you are a 31337 g4m3r, integrated graphics is indeed a joke. However, it's good enough for 85% of the users out there, who will almost never run anything more intensive than Word, IE, and the occasional Flash-based game. Same deal with integrated sound -- for Windows event beeps and boops, it's more than plenty.
10/100 Mb/s speeds are now common on integrated Ethernet controllers, and most of them have very little braindamage these days. 1Gb/s on-chip controllers are also already starting to appear.
To put it another way: Parallel, RS-232 serial, and PS/2 mouse/keyboard ports used to require separate expansion cards. Today, they are integrated into the motherboard chipset, and no one thinks the worse for this. For those who need extra ports or special high-performance ports, third-party PCI expansion cards are still available.
So, in short, the way systems are being put together these days, there's no cost savings to be had by breaking out the peripherals you don't need. If you feel a need to put the old parts to good use, donate them to a school, or use them to build a Frankenbox on which to do kernel or driver development :-).
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I understand what you are saying. I recently went shopping for a new DIY system and the amount of hardware that's already on the motherboard is staggering.
But considering that even good motherboards that are loaded can be found for roughly the same price as loaded motherboards, why not just get the motherboard that's loaded, go into the BIOS, and disable the device that you don't want to use? Then you can at least use the on-board as a backup system should your hardware cards fail.
For example, if you get a motherboard with 8.1 audio but you don't have an 8.1 speaker system, disable the on-board audio and use whatever sound card you prefer. If you sound card dies, get into the BIOS, turn on the on-board audio, load the drivers, and keep going.
In my recent experience, barebones motherboards really do not provide a better value compared to motherboards that have a lot of on-board hardwar e. This is particularly true when you can just disable the functions that you don't want in the BIOS.
After all, you never know when having that "on-board, backup" hardware might come in handy - especially if something happens to your sound card (for example) when all of the PC stores are closed and your on-line game with your buddies is scheduled to start in 15 minutes! Then you'll be glad to have on-board functionality!
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
But considering that even good motherboards that are loaded can be found for roughly the same price as loaded motherboards
So much for my proofreading skills. Oh, well. You know what I meant.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
The boards i tend to buy usually have had better hardware than the discrete solutions i had before. Its pretty easy to find a good board with a Gigabit Ethernet NIC, 6.1 Audio. And if you dont want to use a feature you can always disable it in the BIOS.
After all those days it's pretty impossible to buy a cellular phone that is just a phone. Cars with only brakes, motor and transmission costs four times as much as electronic-ridded drive-by-razor-thin-wire-with-microsoft-on-board mass market marvels. Or try getting plain vanilla DSL with one IP, no frills and direct connection to something that resembles internet, instead of living in militarized zone of your own.
Fuck it. You are out of luck. At least while the market is dominated by Bling-Bling and neoX Platinum adorers (like most of the slashdotters).
Actually this is pretty sad - you just cannot get the basics anymore. Or, as Henry Ford would say - you can get any car, while it's in black color, has 4wd and 17" discs, 2553cm3 6 cylinder engine and cupholder near the drivers seat.
After my Windows box recently lost its life in a puff of awful smelling smoke,
Next time be sure to clean out the registry on a regular schedule.
With all the advances in wifi and wimax coming out soon why can't more mother board components be integrated into wireless standards? Why not allow for an at boot time wireless devices configuration protocol to allow hardware devices to be completely independant of the motherboard itself? The BIOS/CMOS would still be configurable to restrict which components would be allowed and new devices detected at boot could be prompted by HARDWARE before OS loading ensues. The interoperability of this could drastically change the world as we know it people. =)
-D
-Debug
sell the parts at a swap meet.
people said the same thing in 1990ish, when manufacturers started integrating serial/parallel/game ports onto the mobos.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
x86 hardware has this all-in-one approach, so I'd say you're pretty much out of luck. Which is a shame because the more they put on the board, the more can go wrong.
Apple builds a lot into a tiny space as well, but their hardware and software is a lot more reliable. That's why most professionals and experts are switching to them.
Even though I like Apple, I'm not going to spout bullshit logic like this in support of them. First you say that with all-in-one designs, more can go wrong, then go on to say that Apple uses all-in-one designs that are more reliable (must be the Jobs-reality-distortion-field effect).
How about this for a counter-argument: having an empty motherboard which must be filled with cards also poses reliability problems at the hundreds of connections made between the PCI slots ant the cards.
...in my basement. From my old 486. No sound (the SoundBlaster 16 just hit the market), no ethernet (I had to buy a 10BaseT 3com), no video (I still have that 1 Mb Trident ISA card). It even doesn't have an IDE or serial controller on-board, but on a ISA card.
So, it you don't mind not being able to use a shiny lots-o-gigaherzt CPU, a second-hand motherboard from 10 years ago is your best bet for a "just a motherboard". Check your local junkyard, there should be plenty.
Companies like via, nvidia, intel produce chips which will tend to the largest market segment, which is how they produce chips with everything on board at a cheap price. If they produced chipsets of different types, the production runs will be smaller, support and testing costs larger and pricing higher. I actually expect the likes of AMD to release CPU+chipset chips with say the top 256MB of ram built-in, along with both the north and south bridge, nic phy, audio and usb and everything else in between. The resulting board+cpu will be cheaper than the current board+cpus.
AMD actually currently integrates the north bridge in the athlon64 if I'm not wrong.
Even if you want architectural simplicity and efficiency, its hard to find a simple ARM, m68k or ppc microcontroller without something built-in specialized for its market.Having just a no-frills set of parts was last seen in the 8086 and 6502 days in which each chip did only one thing. And it was expensive as hell.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
How many times have you needed to swap out something, like a video card, network card, modem (gasp!)? I'm sure quite a few slashdotters have had to quickly swap a video card in for testing your dad's/mom's/girlfriend's (gasp!) machine, and it's great in those instances to have built-in necessities to fall back on. Or next year, when you upgrade, you'll prolly take your fancy video card and stick it in your fancy new machine. You're gonna be very happy when you can just give your younger brother the old box without having to hunt down another video/nic/etc...
>> And why do modern boards still have serial and Parralell ports? They aren't used by 75% of the rest of the world, why are they even included as standard on ALL boards? On Some us because they still have some value but ALL?
My new (as of January) Dell at work doesn't have them. It just has 6 USB ports (8, if you also count the two on the front).
Dell can remove them, because they are selling a complete system and know that customers don't need a PS2 keyboard slot, for example.
The separate motherboard vendors still include them because it is cheaper to sell one motherboard version than it is to sell two, where one has a reduce featureset.
In a few more years they will be phased out. It just takes time. ISA took forever to be phased out as well. PCI is obsolete now, too, but even you might hope that they keep a few PCI slots around for a few years until all your old PCI add-on cards have been replaced. (Assuming you don't use all motherboard built-in features.)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Another problem with on-board video is that more they almost always use the system's RAM for their memory. Unless you have a lot of RAM (512 MB+) that can really impact the system because the memory is taken away from the operating system. More than that, lag of having to go through system circuitry instead of through its own on-board memory could also be a factor, especially if you don't have really fast system memory.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I used to reason exactly like you once and tried to use my software preferences when I choose hardware, no bloat etc, but eventually I found out that hardware "bloat" is not that bad, unlike the software kind. My most stable boxes are the ones that use the onboard components, whereas my old plain vanilla motherboard with a 3rd party soundcard hangs pretty frequently because of god-know-what compatibility issues. When you get onboard audio, at least you know it will work with the chipset.
Unless you consider USB a frill...
Real men get their USB on a PCI expansion card.
paintball
Following up on an offtopic post, but:
t ype=news&ID=6671
http://addict3d.org/index.php?page=viewarticle&
(Includes a link to a timeline)
"For an unknown reason, Google had a DNS problem that caused all of their online services not to loading by writing their URL in your web browser.br> It's funny that most people thought their ISP gone mad, before even thinking that the problem might be at Google.br> Anyway the almighty machine returned to life after 1 hour of being down, the rumors regarding how they were hacked or hijacked seems to be false."
Ive had very good experiences with ABIT barebone motherboards, which I normally use on servers.
If you have on-board video, the manufacturer usually leaves off the AGP Slot or other appropriate Connector that allows you to install in a decent high-end graphics card.
Virtually all MB's with on-board video have an AGP or PCIE connector and disabling the on-board video is at worst a trivial toggle in the BIOS, if it doesn't automatically detect that you've put a different video card in.
paintball
And the floppy disk and IDE connectors are still hanging around... They just don't get it. I'd be willing to pay a $100 premium for a board with 8 SATA ports, 2 NICs, 8 USB, and 3 firewire ports on the back with no more legacy devices.
The mobo market is intensely competative. So for $120 you can something loaded! How much cheaper do you expect your mobo to get? The mobo is the sacred heart of you machine! Get a good one. If you already have a sound or ethernet card, run 2 interfaces! Its all in good fun! The Linux kernel will surprise you with what it can do. Whats wrong with having 10 USB's? SATA RAID? Muliple DVD's? Get an ASUS, MSI, Abit, Soltec, DFI, AOpen, Chaintech, Gigabyte, Foxconn, Epox ... They're all good. Get something that looks good through your side panel. Get cool cables. What no glass side panel, no LED's? You have a modest machine indeed.
an ill wind that blows no good
I am collecting a bunch of older hardware that I no longer have a use for due to the inclusion of everything on the motherboard. I have been finding that I, and my clients, do not use everything when it's new. Eventually, most stuff does get used.
Further, unless you are rebuying good modern *everything* every few years - the on board stuff is probably as good as what you are using.
What am I talking about integrated on the motherboard:
On board USB:
I avoided USB stuff like the plague for several years. Mostly a question of having legacy equipment around. Now that the drivers have been stable (for a long time), all the slots get used.
If I need a faster USB (due to a newer spec, or I want to do faster data xfer) I can use a PCI slot.
Your two year old USB 1.1 card is slower than my onboard USB2.0 ports anyhow. By a lot.
Firewire:
This was not really used in the PC world. Except for video transfer. Now it's also good for data transfer for portable/external hard disks. This may be the least used included item, but worth it for video. Since the HDTV cable boxes are going to have to have a firewire port, I imagine that everyone will be happy that the manufacturer put them in. Now about those ieee1394 800/400 converter cables...
Ethernet Port:
Yes: Almost always needed, it costs the manufacturer what $2 to add? Yes there are better cards than the cheapo NICs, but if you buy a real server it will have a Gb and a 10/100 NIC anyhow.
RAID:
OK, I wish more manufacturers included it. But it is not used enough except for fanboys. If you really set up a server, you need hardware raid and not this pissant software *&(*& However, if you just want data redundancy it's nice. I like the fact that many SATA raid sets seem to be floating around. Most likely item not to be on a new motherboard with the kitchen sink included.
Sound:
I don't give a *&( about sound for some machines, and for others, basic sound is good enough. Worth $2. It's good enough. I only need one machine with a good sampler, everything else can be crap. Most computers don't really need good sound anyhow.
Onboard Video:
I use it, but it's not good enough for anything graphics intense. Consider this a "For business" feature. Despite the fact that modern on board graphics processors are faster than my entire pile of ancient ATI all in wonders combined. Also, this is the item most likely to be left off a motherboard, after raid.
To conclude:
Not everything gets used at first, but eventually most of it will be. Also, after a few years (the life of a good motherboard) the items included on the kitchen-sink motherboard are prob. better than your old kit anyhow. For example, within ten percent, a NIC is a NIC is a NIC (with few exceptions). Your good NIC from a few years ago is not likely faster than the onboard version. As a second example, your two year old USB card is slower than the on-board USB2 slots.
So you will not use everthing now, but you may eventually. Also, often what is on the motherboard is as fast as your old kit - if not faster. If you use the integrated motherboard, you save the extra cost of the kitchen sink items by sparing the two minutes it would take to install each item of your old kit.
Did you try this ?
Just buy one of those boards with all the extra stuff on it, since it is probably just as cheap or even cheaper than ones that don't have the built-in stuff, then just go into the BIOS and disable all the features that you don't want to use.
There's a good chance that the integrated stuff he's going to get for free anyway is actually BETTER than the expansion cards he's so insanely keen on continuing to use.
Welcome to the reality of computer components - there's no value in trying to save old tech.
paintball
Well if you do happen to use all the integrated junk(although some of it is less junky, such as the ATI or nVidia integrated video) you tend to use less power. And yes, lots of people do use the integrated stuff, because they don't know about the better audio quality, video clarity, network performance(mainly moot on that one), and system performance they can get with dedicated hardware.
That and it is nearly as cheap to get integrated systems than bare mainboards(especially microATX, which is often cheaper because of the massive OEM market for them.)
It's cheaper for chipset and motherboard makers to make a limited number of models, and that means extra features even if you're not going to use them.
Even if your motherboard doesn't have a network port, it's probably supported by the chipset and there's probably traces on the motherboard for one to be soldered on. I imagine it costs more to make different models that don't include hardware already supported by the chipset, as that makes inventory much more complicated for the manufacturor and the various retailers.
Also... if you tried to support everything needed these days with PCI cards, you'd run out of space pretty quick, and you'd have bus contention issues. Network, USB/Firewire, sound, etc. Doesn't leave a lot of room for expansion. If all the basics are sitting on the chipset, it's pretty hard to get a solution that's enough better to be worth the money.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Yeah, and probably pay $1,000 more for the board and UltraSPARC module than even a high-quality AMD-compatible motherboard and Athlon 64 3600+ just because of the Sun brand.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a Sun bigot with a lot of Sun hardware in my house (all free, fortunately). But their outrageous prices have always been one of my hatreds for them, and I doubt that this motherboard is any different. Considering that they don't even list a price (even under "Price and Buy"), that makes me even more worried about the cost.
The SX1500 and SX2500 might be barebone motherboards, but that one Sun motherboard + UltraSPARC module could probably buy four or five decent AMD CPU + MB combinations.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
It's so often you let the smoke out of something and it doesn't work anymore. It's too bad you can't just buy a can of smoke, and refill the motherboard.
If that's what you really want, you can buy a passive backplane and plug in CPU and peripheral boards, up to and including dual Xeons Passive backplanes are used in specialized industrial applications, and will cost you far more than a "loaded" motherboard. This is not something desktop users buy. But they do exist.
I see lots of advice that say buy a motherboard with extra stuff and if you need to disable it in the bios. But many new motherboards are making a choice to go with a non-standard IO layout. While usually this means it comes with the ATX plate you need, there are those of us who bought into cases that use an older style of ATX back plate, non-standard size ATX back plate, or in even more rare and cheaper cases no plate what so ever.
For example... my case is an HP Vectra desktop with that Asus a7v333 motherboard. I'm odd I know. In order to get the provided plate to fit properly I'd need to cut the hole larger by about 10cm or so. Further, the audio jacks extend above the size of the hole making the top jack unuseable.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
n/t
You could go for Asus X-series mainboards like the A7N8X-X or the A7V8X-X, for example. These are no frills motherboards that have only the barest features compared to current mainboards. Sure they have built in sound and NIC, but you can always trun that stuff off. Cheap and effective.
Bibo Ergo Sum.
Can I sell you my socket 7 board? How about my slot 1 440BX board?
Seriously, though...
Check Intel's website, they generally have the most bare bones motherboards on the market. Shuttle also has some pretty simple boards if you're going the AMD K7 or K8 route. If you want anything more basic than that, or more oldschool, check out ebay. It's very easy to make a decent midrange PC for less than $100 in parts bought via eBay.
If you want wizbang modern, you only have to spend about $300 at NewEgg. These days the most expensive part of a PC is the OEM version of Windows XP.
> Is it still possible to purchase a motherboard
> that's *just* a motherboard?"
Of course it is.
Either buy a decent server-motherboard (Tyan) or buy an ultra-cheap one (they usually don't have the shitty onboard-RAID or lacking S-ATA).
But the first option is expensive and the second option might yield an overall crappy motherboard...
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
With the disappearance of older PCI slots, how do you intend to use the cards you have now?
My Pentium II Xeon motherboard has around 6 32-bit PCI slots. My Intel Xeon motherboard that I replaced that system with only has 4 as two slots were replaced by 64bit PCI slots. I used 5 slots on the Pentium II Xeon so two cards had to go.
Thankfully the new motherboard came with an ethernet controller built into it so that card was nuked. The only other option I would have had would have been to drop the money on a 64Bit SCSI controller.
My next system will require me to do even more dropping and change my video card since my Quadro 4 is AGP and those are not used on Xeon64 motherboards. And the best configuration I see for a board of the brands I like is 2 or 3 standard PCI slots. Which means I wil lhave to sacrifice another card which thankfully the USB 2.0 one can remain in the Xeon 2.8 system it is in now.
Anonymous Cowards generally receive no replies because you're a coward and I'm a bitch
If I have to spend $75 for a motherboard with some integrated hardware, it sure would be nice to only spend $40 on a reliable barebones motherboard.
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=AV49VN&sou rceid=00384104774967759786
Signature is for people who have more than a dollar in their bank accounts.
Whilst some things like your AGP graphics card you will want to keep from your old system, you should consider some of the onboard alternatives. For example, a PCI gigabit ethernet interface will be running off the PCI bus, meaning its limited to the shared 133mbit. Most onboard gigabit controllers communicate with the Northbridge directly, which means that you can utilise gigabit fully. The same goes for things like SATA controllers, extra IDE controllers, and other controllers, though some of these may actually be running off the PCI bus when they're integrated. You will want to check out the block diagram for any motherboard you look to purchase to see where the bottlenecks are. That said, the quality of Video/Audio onboard are not cutting-edge, so you will want disable these (and any other integrated features you dont use) on the motherboard's BIOS. For my P4 2.8 system, I run it all on an Abit IC7-MAX3, which I can highly recommend for desktop systems. Milage may vary on your requirements. Happy Hunting!
Use all the on board stuff anyway. It keeps the inside of your case much cleaner, lower power consumption, better air flow, etc.
What's funny about that is this is one of the things I despise about Mac design. An RS-232 port is so ridiculously easy to make hardware for, you can build a serial interface to something in a couple minutes. Maybe you don't like doing anything with hardware outside your computer, but I have found it absolutely invaluable for that purpose.
It might be slightly cheaper to buy a barebones motherboard, but with all the extra features, it is definitely worth it for the extras. Motherboards are cheap these days, plus do you want to use up all your PCI slots with USB, audio, IDE, ect... cards when you can have those integrated. Of course, if you are an audiophile, you may want a better sound card. If you run a database on a RAID array, you might want a better disk controller. But if you are none of these, then all the integrated perhipherals are probably better than the add-on cards in your old PC, and definitely good enough for most uses.
If you're running Windows, the integrated on-board stuff will work fine, and as another poster says, you could use the built-in graphics to run a second monitor, which you'll find very addictive. If you're a gamer, you'll probably want to use your own video card, but otherwise it's nice to have your system be cooler and quieter with the built-in video.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Mwave, TigerDirect, Directron, Newegg....there are many sites that provide these barebones motherboards. I have never seen one for less than 80 dollars though. I have found all in one integrated boards for much cheaper. If you are looking for a barebones system though, try Tyan, MSI, or Giga-byte. ASUS tends to pack everything onto the board, soyo and abit are the same. I havent heard or had much experience with epox, dfi (they also have good reviews, and I believe the lanboy is fairly barebones but expensive). Do about 20 minutes searching and you can find what you are looking for. I personally recommend a Giga-byte board. I have had nothing but great luck with them.
Best of luck in your search.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
They're still "bundled-with-lotsa-stuff" motherboards, but there are simpler models with less-bundled-stuff in.
People actually do use the onboard features of motherboards.
For example, the onboard sound solutions on motherboards have advanced to the point that most people don't purchase a third-party soundcard; there is simply not enough benefit when the onboard sound systems often offer 5.1 support, even EAX support.
Onboard video is also very popular in office environments where a faster video solution is not needed; it saves companies money.
Onboard NICs are particularly popular. I daresay that EVERYONE uses them, since there is no advantage to purchasing an add-on NIC unless one needs extra ports (And many motherboards provide 2 anyhow). Furthermore, there are several advantages to certain onboard gigabit NICs. Whereas PCI-based NICs tend to top out at 400 to 600 megabits due to the limitations of the PCI bus, many onboard gigabit cards are plugged directly into the northbridge via a dedicated high-speed bus that lets them circumvent the PCI bus.
I think you don't understand mass production.
It's often cheaper for you to get anything more common, because the likelyhood of someone having overstock or similar is higher.
Second, if a manufacturer is going to make an onboard LAN model, they then have to decide if it's worth the cost to _remove_ it for their cheaper models. Usually it's not; the cost of keeping track of making 2 products, stocking 2 products and reengineering stuff is substantial.
This is true in many industries.
This is tremendously more true of motherboards now that a single chip often provides most of these onboard functionalities and is unified with other necessary motherboard functions. Having to design without that controller is prohibitive, so they don't. Not soldering on the connector only saves a few pennies, and makes your motherboard less featureful.
The only time it's usually a good idea is when they need some reason to charge less for some product. In many of these cases they just disable features - often even though they're produced exactly the same and contain all the same chips.
Incidentally, at least your good videocard is still plenty useful - even if identical to the onboard one - because it doesn't use your system RAM and probably system RAM bandwidth.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
You can get a motherboard with SATA, ATA, RAID, onboard audio, NIC, etc, for like 60$ CDN. Maybe back in the days when motherboards were 180$ CDN for a barebones, and 250$ for the one with terrible AC'97, was this an issue. Nowadays you buy based on what features you want, and disable the rest.
I use Intel EEPros in all my machines because they are well supported and in every OS I can load. I just disable the onboard NICs. I've noticed, though, that recently onboard audio has become high enough quality that I can move the mouse and not "hear" it on my speakers.
Suck it up!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
This is a different one that is floating around the internet. look at the bookmarks. The fact that they were both running tiger is coincidental. We took this today at about 4:30pm mountain time.
Why wont /. cover this? I sent in two stories with links and everything!
or else!
I'm not always happy with the quality of the components of the "all-in-one" boards. I usually end up with third part LAN and sound, or RAID if I'm using it. Why pay for it if you don't need it? I'd MUCH rather pay for better quality cans and such.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I'm annoyed that useless plugs are still present when onboard features are disabled. I reckon the rear panel connectors should just be solid USB2.0, Firewire 800, and external SATA II ports. Leaving the consumer to make the choice of what cards will fill the PCI/e-16/4/1 slots. Going with onboard encourages mediocrity and stifles competition. And it means you end up with a whole lot of wasted real estate at the rear of your PC. Meaning that to take advantage of many ONBOARD devices (if you do want to use them) uses up slots intended for add-in cards.
How about a bare bones board that cost around $100 - 200, but comes with TOP QUALITY components?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Search this, search that... God forbid we get some actual discussion on a topic. If all you Google-worshipping goons had your way, we'd all have it as our browser home page and it would be locked.
Seriously, that was an insightful topic and interesting answer...
Mod away.
I had a sucky sig.
.... integrated stuff.
Finding a mobo without integrated video is cake, but lots of these integrated components are part of the newer chipsets themselves. So, unless you're doing pro audio, a chipset's Dolby Digital S/PDIF out should do fine. And unless you have one of those slick aggregating 4 port ethernet boards, the onboard network (which is likely gigabit copper) should do fine. Ditto USB2, and even firewire (mine's got FW800 and SATAII). Just buy a board with stuff that supports whatever OS(es) you wanna run on them.
I just built a system based on the GV-3D1 bundle set (screw Apple's lousy Powermac refresh!) that includes a 2x6600GT one-board SLI. All I needed was RAM and media, and a Viewsonic VP201. And when NVidia releases support for SLI in Linux, I have a 20G part waiting for a gentoo build.
Unless it's pro-spec, put your old stuff on eBay or donate it to someplace that can give you a tax writeoff.
If you are worried about price you should probably be using a price engine like this one:
http://labs.anandtech.com/search.php
Of course, since so many components are integrated into the core logic of the motherboards, you're going to be hard pressed to find too many bare bones platforms. You can usually find motherboards with SATA and sound, but NICs are pretty much always integrated into motherboards these days. Integrated Graphics fell out of style a few years ago, and the few Intel and ATI motherboards that still like to use IGP also have non-IGP alternatives.
And they *always* consume memory bandwidth; which is why 'offboard' video often improves overall system performance.
I've got bunches of PCs in my office. Most of them have separate video cards, but recently I picked up a bunch of AMD 2500+ boards with built in video, sound, ethernet, USB, etc.. for under $40 each shipped. They've been running for six weeks straight in a hot closet without a hiccup. They're not the fastest machines, but if you don't need high-end graphics or sound, they're a good deal. Total cost of each machine was just a little over $230.
I've had good luck with PC Chips, Asus, ECS boards. I've had some bad experiences with Biostar boards, but others swear by them.
Why would you go to all the trouble of selecting AGAINST features? Nobody's making you use them.
Most of the chipsets out there are highly integrated, so you don't get a cost savings for getting a mobo without USB, because the USB controller hardware is already built in to the IO controller. Same often goes for sound and/or video.
Get a motherboard that has the features you want. Don't sweat the fact that you're getting stuff you won't use...you're not going to realize any cost savings by cutting them off.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
That's because the fixed costs associated with a run of books (especially books in late editions) is relatively lower, so they don't have to adjust the contribution margin much to have an acceptible breakeven level.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
I recommend SuperMicro It'll have stuff built on, but, thankfully, they at least put the expansion slots in, and you get quite a few. Just go to their products section. Reasonable price, too. Though, it's Intel, not AMD stuff. I have yet to get an AMD since my last one fried 9 years ago.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Integrated video is crap. Most use the main processor and RAM. Unless your integrated video actually has its own processor, you can seriously degrade performance.
Might as well get the integrated stuff and then disable them later or something.
My advice, just buy one that you can plan a future with. It your lan card fails, you have the on-board. Same with Video and sound.
I realize that ponying up the extra $16 bucks to get a $56 dollar motherboard from your typical $40 dollar motherboard is quite a strech but if you get this board, you'll be able to play virtually every game made before 2003 and, if your patient, some stuff afterwards.
Not to sound like a snot, but if you become a u83r 1337 g4m3r, you can always give the system to your sister.
That's what I'm after. I don't need games, keyboards, mMode, text messages, SMS, IntarWebs, etc. I just want a phone. Preferably one without sidetalking.
blarg.
...before assuming you have "good" expansion cards.
already have a good graphics card,
That one Ill give you. Nearly any decent AGP graphics card is better than onboard graphics. On the other hand if you are talking about a PCI graphics card or some odd graphics chip (S3,etc.) you would probably be better off with the onboard stuff on at least some boards.
NIC,
Unless you are talking about an Intel or 3Com based gigabit card, you are likely MUCH better off with the onboard NIC, as most modern motherboards include a fairly high performance gigabit controllers.
USB audio device,
No offense but except for a few rare exceptions almost all USB audio devices suck. Even the ones that dont suck generally have very high CPU requirements and put unneeded load on the USB bus. You are WAY better off with onboard sound.
I just need a no-frills motherboard like I used to be able to buy. It seems like a waste to buy a board with all the built-in stuff (and probably pay extra for it) when I'm never going to use it.
Like I said, I would highly recommend carefully considering using the onboard stuff before making up your mind. There are alot of advantages to onboard chips and very few disadvantages. And for all but the most highend stuff they are generally just as good if not better performance wise (especially NICs). And to be honest all that extra stuff is for the most part FREE. A bare bones no frills motherboard now-a-days is either ultra cheap crap or is a specialty item that costs just as much as a good integrated board.
Do a lot of people actually use the on-board stuff?
Yes. Most do.
Is it still possible to purchase a motherboard that's *just* a motherboard?"
Yes its possible. But I cant think of a good reason why anyone would want to... Except for the exception of Video, most of the built in stuff on a good integrated board are more than good enough for most people.
Sigs are stupid.
- sigs are stupid
As of 11:53 PM est, a whois on google.com returns the following:
.com and .net domains can now be registered
C OM I NE .THAN.SECZY.COM
-----
Whois Server Version 1.3
Domain names in the
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net/
for detailed information.
GOOGLE.COM.SUCKS.FIND.CRACKZ.WITH.SEARCH.GULLI.
GOOGLE.COM.HAS.LESS.FREE.PORN.IN.ITS.SEARCH.ENG
GOOGLE.COM
To single out one record, look it up with "xxx", where xxx is one of the
of the records displayed above. If the records are the same, look them up
with "=xxx" to receive a full display for each record.
>>> Last update of whois database: Sat, 7 May 2005 08:52:39 EDT
The time you've spent writing this post probably cost you the difference between a stripped down MB and an all in one.
Hell, I'll only charge you $75 to use a dykes to cut off all the ports and stuff that *annoy* you so much.
Are you sure you aren't a little obsessive?
Personally I don't think the trend will end anytime soon. And frankly I don't have a problem with that. I have the Asus P4P800-E Deluxe in my gaming rig, but simply haven't installed the drivers for the on board sound (I use my own SoundBlaster), and I also like the fact that WiFi is optional (Because I have no need to pay more for something I don't need). The main reason people should buy motherboards is for the performance, and value for money. The extra graphics, sound and ethernet chips cost next to nothing to intergrate onto the board, and I would never think of buying a motherboard without them - despite the fact that I don't use them.
Naw. Real men install an ISA slot PCMCIA card in their desktop machine and then plug a PCMCIA USB adapter into it.
...but that's not right.
The only DESKTOP board I could find that is still relatively "modern" is the Intel D875PBZ.
'nuff said.
At least in my experience. Fedora Core is what I normally use, and FC3 finds all of the Nforce-based LAN and audio devices no problem. Even before FC 3, all you needed to do was install a Nvidia provided tarball, run make, and reboot. A lot of the SiS and VIA stuff is supported well too. As long as you stick with mainstream mobo makers, it doesn't seem to be that big of an issue. Economies of scale have driven a lot of standardization in the LAN and sound chips used. For example, on a lot of the boards, the onboard LAN chip is usually either Intel or Realtek based.
The concept of actually getting lower prices for fewer features on the board does not work the way one would think. Mass production makes it "really cheap" to just slap on functionality like graphics card (chip, really), ethernet, etc.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Looks like someone's been busy. A whois on Microsoft currently (11:58 pm est) returns the following (microsoft lowercased to pass the lameness filter):
.com and .net domains can now be registered
.....
m icrosoft.com.WANADOODOO.COMT .PYROFREAK.ORG.RULEZ.AND.DIOX YTECH.NET.DELETED.GANDI.NET. SIMPLECODES.COMA USE.LINUXISGOD.CO M
m icrosoft.com.OHMYGODITBURNS.COMV ES.AT.SHAUNEWING.COML .AS.SIMPLECODES.COM. CURTYV.COMS .COM- BULLSH IT.NETi crosoft.com.HAS.A.PRESENT.COMING.FROM.HUGHESMISS ILES.COMC OM
microsoft.com.CAN.GO.FUCK.ITSELF.AT.SECZY.COMc rosoft.com.ARE.GODDAMN.PIGFUCKERS.NET.NS-NOT-IN -SERVICE.COMK .HUGE.ONES.AT. EXEGETE.NET
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for detailed information.
Aborting search 20 records found
microsoft.com.WAREZ.AT.TOPLIST.GULLI.COM
microsoft.com.SUX.BU
microsoft.com.SMELLS
microsoft.com.SHOULD.GIVE.UP.BEC
microsoft.com.RAWKZ.MUH.WERLD.MENTALFLOSS.CA
microsoft.com.LI
microsoft.com.IS.NOT.AS.COO
microsoft.com.IS.IN.BED.WITH
microsoft.com.IS.GOD.BECOUSE.UNIXSUCK
microsoft.com.IS.A.STEAMING.HEAP.OF.FUCKING
microsoft.com.HAS.ITS.OWN.CRACKLAB.COM
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microsoft.com.FILLS.ME.WITH.BELLIGERENCE.NET
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microsoft.com.AND.MINDSUCK.BOTH.SUC
microsoft.com
To single out one record, look it up with "xxx", where xxx is one of the
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>>> Last update of whois database: Sat, 7 May 2005 08:52:39 EDT
I've always built my own systems from components. Doing so may cost more than a pre-built unit, but the big advantage to DIY is that you get to pick every single component based on YOUR standards. You're not constrained by a group decision by some collection of profit-hungry BoD members.
When building any system, it is CRITICAL to match what you want in a computer to the components chosen, and there is a definite trade-off between system speed and stability.
Example: I have no interest whatsoever in 99.9% of the available computer games, but I also do some high-end EDA work (notably electronic schematics, circuit simulation, and PC board design). This calls for computing power that is at least somewhat comparable to systems built specifically for gaming. I also knew that stability (as in resistance to any sort of crashing, application or system) was critical to me.
Like you, I don't like a ton of extra stuff on my motherboards. With that in mind, I chose a Tyan dual-CPU board for the AMD Athlon MP chips, specifically the Tiger MPX. I kitted it out with two processors right from the get-go (Athlon MP2600's), and a full gig of ECC DRAM. The board itself comes with two serial, one parallel, two USB, and a 3Com 10/100 NIC all on board. Everything else is left to the end user. These days, that's about as bare-bones as I've seen any board get.
Tyan motherboards have a great reputation for stability in the face of all kinds of different configurations, but they're not very overclockable and, thus, not very popular with the gaming crowd. Tyan is the board you choose if you're building a serious server or high-end workstation, not something to game with.
One other thing that is absolutely vital if you're serious about DIY: Follow the CPU manufacturer's recommendations for motherboards, power supply, memory, and cooling. I cannot stress this strongly enough, particularly where the motherboard and power supply are concerned! Besides the Tyan mo-bo, I opted for Corsair memory DIMMs and a 550W power supply from PC Power & Cooling, all in accordance with AMD's recommendations for the MP series CPUs. A visit to their site will provide you with hardware recommendations for any of their CPUs, and it looks like Intel provides a very similar aid on their site.
The system has been with me for nearly two years now, and I've had ZERO trouble with it. Windows 2000 Pro (you won't catch me using XP, ever) has been solid as a rock on it, as have every single one of my applications.
Building your own system has a lot to say for it but, as others have pointed out, be prepared to pay more than you would for a pre-built box.
Happy tweaking.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
I can see both arguments.
I have a laptop, and it took me a bit to realize that the integrated modem was getting detected as a sound card and my real sound card was turned off. Maybe it was just linux having a bad day; but, I know it wouldn't have been a problem if I didn't have the modem. However, who wants a laptop without a modem, just in case? Desktops are a little different, but the general argument still holds.
So? less is less, or more is less?
Tharkban (It is a signature after all)
At least he's not asking how to build his own motherboard...
1) Bare bones motherboards are generally going to be more expensive. Functions like the NIC and sound are a part of many modern chipsets, so it doesn't cost much extra to add that capability to the board.
2) Unless your system is fairly new, and/or your current expansion cards are premium stuff, the integrated components may very well be superior to whatever you're using now.
3) Not having to put in all those cards frees up expansion slots and room inside your case, improving air flow and probably consuming less power.
4) Even if you keep using your old expansion cards, they may die some day, and having a perfectly viable backup built right into your motherboard will be something you're thankful for.
I'm not sure which CPU he's trying to support, but on the AMD side, a lot of the "value" motherboards that have built in NIC and audio are of excellent quality. (Some of the sata and raid functions still leave plenty of room for improvement)
Chances are you're going to see minimal performance difference between all of your options. I really like the nforce series of motherboards with the Nvidia chipsets, but VIA has an excellent product as well.
Note that you don't have to use the onboard components on most motherboards.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
It is easy to find mother boards withou on board video. You can disable the sound in the bios. WHo cares about the onboard NIC I'm sure its as good as the NIC card you have
Can anyone suggest a motherboard I can easily install inside my car? Power supply is what it comes down to I think. I can then use compact flash cards as EIDE hard drives, so there are no moving parts. There are various things I'd like to play around with, including a jukebox and wireless network, but I have yet to figure out how to power this stuff conveniently.
AC'97 is just a standard for building sound chipsets on a motherboard. It has little to do with the quality or performance of the components that use it.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Agreed. I have a 800Mhz Celeron small form factor Gateway PC without the legacy "crap" I basically got for free. Being a small form factor PC with some decent horsepower, I have thought up several projects that it would be great for. Except I always run into the problem that it basically only has USB1.1 ports (and it uses those funky 1/2 height PCI slots, to make things even more difficult).
In my experience most motherboards go up if a whiff of smoke because the power supply went bad. Before you get that new motherboard, I recommend that you check out/replace your current power supply.
Depending on the speed you want, try a thrift shop.
You may have to buy a whole box for $25 but you get to play with the parts.
I have found it best to buy generic machines at thrift shops, Compaqs, Dell, AST etc are not generic enough.
At least late last year, intel still sold motherboards that were *just* motherboards. i think they also had models that had nothing built in besides an NIC also.
I would almost agree with that statement. Lately, most motherboard I have seen go bad have been because of bad capacitors. It depends on when he bought his board. Ever since about 2000 I have ran into more bad capacitors (either leaking or bulging tops), to be specific, of the 6700 uF varity.
While the power supply may be the culprit, and I do agree with getting it checked.....I would recommend looking at the caps on the board even before that. ASUS and Giga-byte both had a couple of bad batches of boards becuase of the cheap caps they used.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
Oh, and stop being difficult. :)
There's nothing wrong with onboard sound. I use my motherboard's VIA AC'97 audio all the time, and the quality is perfectly fine. There's no hiss or buzz coming out of the speakers in the background.
In reality, there's almost always no difference between onboard sound and a discrete sound card.
Now, onboard video, on the other hand, is crap...
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
If your old AGP card is more than about 3 years old (1x or 2x) it won't work on a current-model motherboard anyhow (4x or 8x 1.5v) ... and may even damage one.
As much as I hate HP, I have to admit that they've done one thing right: many of their desktop PCs use Asus motherboards.
I have one HP machine (no, I'm not stupid enough to pay money for one--my parents gave it to me when they got a new one), that has an Asus P4B266 motherboard inside it. It's currently in my closet being used as a server, and I have to say that the board's not bad...
Another old HP machine that used to belong to my parents (which is currently sitting half-dismantled on my bed) also has an Asus board--specifically, a P2B-VE (hey, I said it was an old machine).
There's one site that has a list of what motherboards come with what HP machines. A very large amount of them have Asus boards, and there are also quite a few machines that have MSI boards.
Contrast this with Dell. Dell not only makes their own boards, but they use all sorts of proprietary form factors. A friend of mine, who has a shitty Dell PC, wanted to install a new hard drive. His machine has only one internal 3.5" bay and one external 3.5" bay (taken up by the original hard drive and floppy drive, respectively), so he decided to remove the floppy drive to put the new hard drive in. It turns out that Dell makes their own floppy drives and internal bays, which have their own proprietary screw arangement. Yes, I said proprietary screw arrangement of all things. No storebought drive will fit into that machine's drive bays because of that. To hell with Dell. Also, we found out that Dell uses some kind of oddball heatsink/fan--it actually attaches to the case and funnels air through holes in the case. It's like a CPU fan and case fan in one device. Freaky.
As I said above, I hate HP, but I at least have some respect for them. I have no respect for Dell whatsoever.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Buy a cheap common board, and simply don't use the crappy devices provided with it. I personally don't know anybody using the onboard sound cards. They're just good enough to be connected to $5 plastic speakers, but the signal/noise ratio is absolutely awful. Onboard NIC and USB can sometimes be good though. Anyway, an all-in-one board will cost you less than the rare board with just what you want.
Willy
I have the exact same system you're describing- to get a NIC to fit in the damn thing required me to bend the backpanel of the PCI card down.
The system works just great with OpenBSD though; it's the only system that's never given me hardware crap past the lack of legacy connectors. My laptop runs louder than that Gateway.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
Thank you. You worded that post a much better way then I'd ever be able to come up with myself.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
The definition of "clean" board is different nowdays. Basically, what you want now is a board that only has onboard audio and possibly lan. Onboard video is evil for the same reasons it has always been evil
And why do modern boards still have serial and Parralell ports? They aren't used by 75% of the rest of the world, why are they even included as standard on ALL boards? On Some us because they still have some value but ALL?
Personally, every machine I've built lately has used a serial console instead of a keyboard/monitor.
Then, I just let them do their thing, no clutter, no excess equipment. If I can't log into one of them over the network, I can take the laptop to its location and get on that way.
I rarely use the parallel port, though an organization I am a member of does have a machine that shares several parallel-port printers over the network.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Google IS my browsers' home page. It IS locked. And in a few days if someone googles for a bare bones motherboard, THIS discussion will be among the results.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There aren't many widely-available alternatives to PCI right now. AFAIK, there's PCI-X and PCI-Express. PCI-X is only viable in the server market, and PCI-Express cards that aren't video cards are practically nonexistant.
PCI-Express will replace PCI one day, but it will be a long time before PCI-Express is even a viable alternative for anything except video cards. Even in the mid-late 90s, when ISA was still around, there were plenty of PCI cards. Now, no one uses Serial and Parallel ports, and USB devices are all oer the place, but you still see Serial and Parallel ports on most boards. PCI Express is still in its infancy--PCI ain't gonna be obsolete for a long time. AGP, on the other hand, will die very soon, as the only area in which PCI Express has made progress is video cards.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
In IT industry it's called "immersive customer experience".
Think mp3 (a shit of a standard), think cameras (tasteless joke from marketing droids, but good if you wan't to MMS someone a closeup of your member. Used mainly so.), think CoreCell or DualEverything (fuck that shit). Think extra MegaMembers from your new CPU (think what the Girls will say - extra 254 MHz!!!). Think voided warrianties (and unread manuals). Think your old grandma at outlook (and yourself as support person on the phone line).
Think bling-bling!!!
Now there is cheap and a good deal. Know the diffrence. I bought a Shuttle motherboard cause it was cheap, well in less then 4 months it died a stupid death, same thing with a certain model ibm hard drive series, also don't skimp on the PSU I have one over heat and blow up and another just go KILLME and stop working. Cheap == CRAP
/. with I can't find a part I need crap. Google is your friend so is pricewatch. USe them and make the rest of us happyer in the process. :)
Some of the cheapest MB I have seen have had built in everything and still have 3 PCI and AGP. So what is the big freaking deal. Stop bitching and start looking for the part you need and don't come running to
Life is marked by pain.
Dropping it is way too rad to my liking, you never know when you need it for a router, eprom programmer, pda or whatever. A better idea would be to use the space for some extra usb ports and supply par/serial headers which you can swap with the usb. Inside the case it's just a small flatcable, doesn't take up much space on the board.
Completely false.
Pretty much all of the new on-board audio supports multiple channels (OS drivers may be another story!). The bleeding edge on-board audio even supports High Definition Audio.
Most of the high-volume motherboard chipset vendors -- Intel (the big fish), AMD, NVIDIA, SiS, ULi, VIA, ... -- all implement the same advanced features in their chipsets: SATA2 NCQ, USB 2, HD audio, gigabit ethernet, and more. Just wait 3-6 months, and a new-and-spiffy ethernet/SATA/USB/audio feature will appear for free on a modern motherboard. If its a mass-market feature, of course.
Blindly choosing "no on-board devices" is rather silly. Today's mass market motherboard contains on-board devices, which means the cheapest motherboards give you that stuff for free. If the on-board device meets your feature requirements, use it. Sealed silicon interconnects are far more reliable than PCI slots anyway.
Newegg.com
Not really.
The fallacy is that these extra peripherals cost extra. They don't, really. The price you pay is determined by, more than any other factor, the economy of mass producing exactly the same product for such a large market.
Especially in the chipset, those extra transistors come almost for free. It would cost MORE to make another version of the chips with a different configuration. Likewise, even with the same chips, it would cost MORE to make additional models without the extra connectors. There is tremendous savings in manufacturing only one model (or relatively few). Distribution and retail sales also saves costs only having to deal with fewer distinct models.
So just don't use those extra bell and whistles. But don't imagine they're costing you anything extra. The PC motherboard market is extremely competitive, and many companies and individuals shop primarily for the lowest price. If there was an easy way, such as making a different model without some parts, to achieve a lower price, you better believe the manufacturers would do it in a heartbeat.
And there are plenty of budget motherboards. If they could save even a small amount taking off more features, they certainly would. Because they haven't, you can have high confidence those extras aren't actually costing you anything extra.... in the reality of today's manufacturing, distribution and retail marketplace.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
As I recall, you need a MB with the Intel i850 chipset on it. Most of the MB's that I see with this chipset are Socket 423. Hopefully this has given you some more keywords to google.
:q!
- It's cheap. Sub $100 for most everything you need.
- It's less power consuming than a barebone with many expansion boards.
- It's easier to mount. Motherboard, Gfx and you're done.
- Fewer mechanical contacts mean fewer failure points.
- Risks of IRQ conflicts and the like eliminated.
Now, integrated Gfx is only good for ExcelIntegrated audio is also fine, unless you're an audiophile. In that case, disable it and plug in your desired audio card.
Personally, i switched from lotsof expansion boards to integrated in order to improve stability of USB2, primarily, which had been less stable than desirable. A nice side effect was lower power consumption and a cooler box.
Just take any nice MSI or ASUS board, and you're done.
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
A new computer I bought in 2001 had an ISA 56k modem..
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
I recently purchased a asus k8v se deluxe motherboard and have had NO PROBLEM finding the proper support for the onboard AUDIO and NIC (and ieee1394). Running a athlon 64 3000+ that tigerdirect sent me instead of a sempron 3000... oh well, their loss! (runs great)
Currently running a slack 9.1 distro w/ a 2.4.23 kernel... everything runs like a top. No unnecessary third party absurd drivers... no crap, just the goods.
My soundcard/dlink nic are sitting in my closet... can you say 'machine number 2'? I find that having parts for another machine on-hand helps when things go wrong (not that this board doesn't have a 3 year warranty).
All-in-all I'm satisfied with an all-in-one.
This useless space for sale, inquire at front desk.
They aren't used by 75% of the rest of the world, why are they even included as standard on ALL boards?
Because in the business market, which many manufacturers still consider to be important, people aren't throwing away new gizmos and replacing them with new ones every 6 months. Our business has *tons* for misson-critical accessories that are either serial or parallel, and I wouldn't buy a machine without serial and parallel ports.
There are advantages to having a second soundcard particularly for games. I use my on board sound for Flight Simulator as an online ATC sound system allowing for quick and independant volume control of the ATC service. You can also use it as an extra set of outputs for music production if the need arises. :)
RebateFX.com - Spread rebates for Forex traders
Parallel port is good, especially since I use an old laserprinter, which performs very well even today.
The serial port can go too, except for server boards.
PS/2 ports are fine though limited..
just buy any motherboard out there, there are very few bad ones, and if you don't want to pay more for extra gadgets, just get whichever one is cheapest...
Move sig!
This will probably reveal just how third-world my country is, but at the same time that motherboards and other computer parts get used by more people from more backgrounds than just a limited set of people with all-new-everything.
:-)
... peny-wize to go buy an extra USB cable).
... :-)
My old PDA is fine for what I need, and has got only a serial interface, hence I'd like my next computer to include a serial port
My old Printer is just fine. Only reason I'll some day replace it is if the cartridges become hard to find. It is still connected via a parallel cable (though admittedly only because I am too
My mouse I have connected to the PS/2 port using a little converter because it feels more responsive in games compared to being connected to the USB port. While this is not a big factor for me, I suppose I'd like a PS/2 port on a new motherboard for the mouse.
My AT-type keyboard is connected to a PS/2 port because when I got my new (at the time) motherboard, a DIN5-to-PS/2 converter was cheaper than a new keyboard.
Only component I have on USB is my brand-spanking-new digital camera!
Granted, I am in the process of buying a nice new computer, and replacing everything including my 15 year old keyboard, to be based on a Gigabyte 3D1/GA-K8NXP-SLI combo. I do think USB is what Serial always wanted to be. A cheap, easy-to-connect, general-purpose standard, with the intelligence and expandability added that plain old serial lacked. However, I'll still be wanting a serial port for my PDA
--- Abnormally normal.
10 years ago I bought a sound card. Just an SB16 clone, but the audio quality is a lot better than a lot of newer cheaper cards.
The problem is, at the price sound chips cost these days, the manufacturers can get away with using a lot of low quality components. What do people care if the audio's a little crackly, or gets some interference from other components? It's cheap. They just want sound.
When they cost 10 times as much, people did care about this sort of thing. It was an expensive piece of hardware. It should work very well. They couldn't get away with poor quality components. Audio quality isn't improving any more. All the development is put into making it cheaper.
Because the 25% of the world that DO use them think they're quite useful. And as explained in other parts of this thread, it's easier to build one mobo with them, than one with and one without.
For the uses:
Quite many people still have old, parallel printers. I for one do, and I'm not planning to throw my nice (though old) laser printer away anytime soon. Yes, it's possible to connect them with a mini print server, but why?
It's also quite common to connect homebrew electronics to the parallel port. For example, it's quite usual to connect a LCD to the parallel port. As an amateur, it's the easiest. Second shot I think is serial. Third one is USB - and believe me (I have tried to find a cheapish possible solution - a friend asked me if it was possible to connect a LCD by USB) - that one is complicated, and expensive! USB was never intended to be a standard used for homebrew circuits, it's far too complicated (of course that doesn't stop the most advanced amateurs, but for the rest of us?).
For uses of serial ports: I use mine for connecting to my TI-86 calculator, with a home-soldered cable. It's also quite common to give chip programmers etc serial interfaces. Also some industrial equipments as PLC:s and PT:s normally have serial interfaces. For everyday devices - modems! Sure, you can get a new modem with USB, but you're probably switching to broadband in a year anyway. Or you just use the modem for faxing, so the old one works just fine. Serial stuff seems to be more uncommon than parallel though, so just having one serial port is ok, I suppose.
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
running dual video cards and disabling one of them works, but you never really know what's going on. maybe the driver required to disable that onboard card is what goes puff and loses it's magic.
Just to inform you that disabling motherboard components is done at the bios level, not the driver level. If you disable an onboard video adapter, then the OS never knows it's even there.
Also, if one of the parts you're not using is not working or goes wrong, well, you're not using it anyway so i'm not sure where the problem lies.
than a basic board + lots of expansion cards. In my experience, reliablility is a direct function of how many boards are in your PC, so 1 single MB = sweetness.
The other main factor that impacts reliability is, strangely, quality. Especially RAM and powersuply, I've had several of those fail or bug on me. I'm not buying high-end stuff, but the basic stuff from a 1st-tier company.
For motherboards, I'm in love with asus and asrock. I've got PCs hooked up to a very nice 19", 1600x1200 monitor and to a $2,500 stereo, and these are the ONLY brands that give me good enough sound and video signals on-board. the $35 asrock 41gx has much better onboard sound quality than much more expensive boards from MSI and abit, for some reason, and even with an ATI AGP card I can't get quite as clear a picture (text) as with my old nForce2 Asus.
enjoy !
Olivier
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Now that is interesting how are you using the serial ports as an emulator, for local connections?
Also since most people here noticed I said most not all. I know serial is still used by some, and at work we have 3 parralell printers dot matrix printers. but personally I haven't owned a dot-matrix in 10 years. My only serial toy is my UPS. everything else is USB.
I noticed this when shopping for mini-itx boards. there is a total of two models without all the other connectors. If I am trying to make a cool small shape, why do I have to ruin it by cutting out such a huge block at once?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Yea right.
I disabled several video cards and sound cards via my motherboard over the years guess what.
Windows installs drivers for them anyway and reactivates them.
I spent an hour one day trying to figure out what was wrong with win 2k, I finally plugged my network cable into the on board jack and things worked for a minute. Windows had reactivated the barely functioning built-in jack (not sure why but it wouldn't hold a connection)
Windows Plug and play does more than just ask the bios for hardware specs, it does a deep hardware scan sometimes.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Disabling stuff in software, running XP, good god, someone put this thing out of its misery!
Honestly, if your going to disable something like the video/sound, that's what the bios is for.
And if you buy a rubbish all in one, of course you will get rubbish sound, just like if you buy a rubbish sound card. Some of the good quality all one MB's have some excellent chipsets built in. Logic prevails in this area, if you want to do professional sound recording you buy a soundcard matching your needs, if you want to play 3D games you get a matching video card (thought some MB's do come with not bad chipsets but the MB price reflects the addition of a video card that costs as much, if not more, as a standard MB.
People who insist that because its built in, its crap, do not seem to have perspective on the situation, a cheap and nasty all-in-one MB, will give you as much love as a cheap and MB with cheap and nasty add-on cards.
As they say, you get what you pay for.
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
...Windows user. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Maybe some customers still do use them, and they add very little extra cost?
They aren't used by 75% of the rest of the world,
Where does this 75% number come from? Is it made up?
Most likely, a small but significant number of people own peripherals with serial or parallel interface, and keep them around between computer upgrades.
why are they even included as standard on ALL boards?
More likely than not, the motherboard manufacturers have done some real research to determine if customers really need these port and removing them would hurt sales. Since ALL board (actually, a few don't) include these ports, seems quite likely they know something you don't.
I am damn glad Mac's have eliminated all the old hardware ports that don't play nice.
You have a misconception that the persence of parallel and serial ports somehow interferes with the rest of the machine. They don't. It's not like ISA bus, which would slow down other peripherals.
.
I can tell you that I happen to be one of those few who still uses these ports. For example, it's only very recently that JTAG download dongles have been made for USB. And just try to find on that works in Linux. (the Segger J-Link, turns out, has a buggy enumeration algorithm that happens to be tolerated in windows, but linux won't even initialize).
Another common use for the parallel port is legacy copy protection dongles. Lots of specialty software STILL ships with these (though locking to an ethernet mac address is also common).
For servers, serial ports are commonly used for a console to manage the machine without a monitor attached.
But in the mainstream, the serial ports are probably kept around for external modems. Hard to believe? Well, still about half of Americans on-line use dialup. A good number probably have internal modems, but it doesn't take more than a few percent keeping their external modems around to close out a meaningful chunk of the market for a new motherboard than can't use the old modem.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Don't start looking for a new item based on what you don't want, but instead try to find one that includes what you do want.
I had a few requirements for the last motherboard upgrade that I bought for my own personal use, so I made a list:
Support for the last of the Socket-A CPUs
Dual-channel DDR
4 DIMM sockets
At least 5 PCI slots
Two regular IDE ports
Two SATA ports
AGP
I plugged some of these requirements into newegg's search engine, and found several that included all of these features.
It turns out that it was cheaper to buy one that also included on-board audio and a gigabit ethernet jack, than to buy one without.
So, I went with the cheaper one. I've been ignoring the on-board audio since day 1, and decided to just go ahead and use the built-in LAN and free up a NIC for better uses.
I might've chosen one that included Firewire, and on-board video, too, for all I care. I don't have a use for those functions, and I don't foresee having a use for them. But would it piss me off to have paid less for their inclusion, were that the case? Absolutely not.
I know how you feel. I got upset in the 90s when companies irrevocably started putting IDE, floppy, serial, and parallel ports onto motherboards. "What am I going to do with all of these expensive VESA local bus multi-I/O cards?"
Something similar also happened to me in the 80s I realized that the ISA clock card in my XT had been obsoleted by a part on the motherboard.
Needless to say, I got over the trauma of those transitions pretty quickly. You will, too, once you figure out what you're going to do with all those expensive 3c905 and genuine DEC Tulip cards...
[Hint: Local schools, libraries, friends-of-friends, and children-of-friends are all fine places to deposit good hardware which has been obsoleted by a motherboard upgrade. Just make sure you get it to them before time makes it completely fucking useless, and keep it appropriately packaged in antistatic bags or somesuch so it doesn't die all on its own before it gets a chance to be used again.]
Kid-proof tablet..
The Intel D875PBZ is a very simple rock solid motherboard. It does come stock with an Ethernet port; however it does not have audio or video onboard. Other features include: 533/800mhz fsb, up to 4gb DDR-400, etc. Here's the link: http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/bz/
of course read the quote wrong. silly me.
anyways. that sound chip really rocks.
and well, it's the only thing to do dolby digital live.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
This is true. There is also a second issue: when consumer demand evaporates, there is no longer a reason for building a cheap, flimsy version of the device. However, there is still a niche for industrial-strength dot matrix printers: muffler shops, etc.
OKIdata has an extensive line of 9- and 24-pin printers built like tanks, in the $500 range.
Other esoteric applications will insure an ongoing demand for durable equipment.
Also, in a post-Armageddon society, you can re-ink a ribbon more easily than you can refill a toner cartridge.
Slashdot entertains. Windows pays the mortgage.
I have a good shuttle board i bought when my fic died. It has an nforce2 chipset onboard lan, and audio and an agp 8x slot. I don't use the onboard audio, but i use the onboard lan. I keep my pci nics around for use as spares in my sme server and firewall. Besides, what's the big deal? Are you really willing to pay more for less? Are you that picky?
In fact, the only place where it seems to make any difference at all, is in theoretical reliability (number of components divided by mean time of failure). But hey, we all know which components on a motherboard is going to fail. It's those components who must handle a lot of power (i.e. connections between CPU and powersupply). Adding AC97 onboard sound isn't going to make your motherboard fail more often.
The jump from AT to ATX motherboards was a step backwards environmentally. We used to have "Super I/O" cards with all our interfaces on them, and we could reuse that card when we switched motherboards to support a new processor.
These days, with all the ports on the mobo, we throw away an extra pound of plastic every time we change chips. This stuff seldom changes -- the ATX port cluster still includes a parallel port, PS/2 ports, and USB ports like when it was introduced. How much of this stuff is sitting in a landfill now?
I'd like to see most of that integrated with the case. Like the front-mounted USB and audio ports, why not put an actual USB hub and USB audio device, along with USB serial and parallel devices, perhaps a USB ethernet adapter, on a PCB inside the case? Let it connect to a single motherboard USB header.
This would give case designers the ultimate flexibility in putting the ports where they want, since a lot of casemodding these days seems to involve port rearrangement. It would liberate the mobo designers from having to mount and support all that plastic, which would in turn allow motherboards to be smaller for those who don't need all those ports. And, for those of us who don't care to have it integrated into the case, we could stick our port cards or port bays into whatever slot or drive mountings we chose.
Quite a difference from when I ordered my (now useless, thanks to lack of serial ports) serial connector for 35 dollars.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
You mean 5.1 channel output? I've seen a number of motherboards that have 5.1 SPDIF audio jacks. (Heck, some even have those fancy-schmancy optical jacks.)
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
well, don't really know where to buy them in Sweden. And my homebuilt one cost me like 3. There's a bunch of schedules here.
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
I almost bought a MOBO last year that didn't have any, so they do exist, but I needed them for my old Laserjet 6P, and also for my STAMP microcontrollers. Overall, I think there are more people that need them than you realize, especially those that use older hardware.
Why pay the money for SATA right now? Sure the potential speed is higher now, but what I remember from my research into them in Feb. is that in general the speed of the SATA HDD itself is equal to or slower than that of the IDE HDDs. Some SATA HDDs are actually IDE HDDs with an interface board built on top of them so they can work with SATA. Also, I would wait untill SATA2 came out so that I could take advantage of the HDDs that will be produced within the next few years and are faster than IDEs.
Control.
I'm much more comfortable with Linux and iptables than I would be with any of the smaller commercial offerings. I've got the source to the kernel and the OS, and I can upgrade any of them whenever I like.
Plus the skills honed in administering that box carry over to administering other Linux boxes.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Yes the onboard Vi sucks emacs is better!
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Back in 2001, they offered quite a few motherboards with ISA/PCI combinations, and the riser slots for modems weren't used too frequently.
(never quite understood why you'd need a special slot for a modem)
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
I'm using A64 with integrated everything, just plugged processor & ram & drives and put inside case. Cheap indeed. But there was a performance price for doing so.
Integrated GFX sux in X even outside 3D games, id rather utilize the memory bus for something else. And accelerate it faster. Another that I can feel the difference is integrated sound. That correct, the onboard audio becomes choppy when system does something else. I might be inclined to believe that the problem is with COMBINATION of integrated GFX and sound trying to do their stuff at the same time.
On K7 I had similar problems when I did have similar combination but it went away with installing a SBLIVE value from year 99. (which went with the K7 machine to buy a new A64)
With integrated everything there is problem if those integrated chips drivers assume they can USE the main cpu whenever they want and then there are collisions there. Anyway those heavily integrated MB:s are really cheap so there is no harm done if getting one. Just remember that you need either discreet soundcard OR GFX card anyway.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
The problem with onboard video is that 1) it typically uses shared RAM, which is never 100% stable (or if not shared RAM, usually some very small amount -- like 8mb even in current machines!!) 2) in my observation the onboard video circuit is the most likely point where the magic smoke gets out; and 3) *sometimes* it doesn't disable cleanly even if it's otherwise dead, so you can't replace it with a proper AGP card anyway.
Also, motherboards with onboard video are typically made cheaper all around, and are more likely to fail sooner, or not be upgradeable in general -- for every onboard function, typically at least one PCI slot goes away, and how much flexibility do you have in a board with only a couple slots?
Onboard sound and NIC aren't so bad (except for the vanishing slots design thing) because you can have two NICs or two sound cards without the system getting confused, so if one doesn't disable cleanly, it's not a big deal (tho the chips used are usually bottom end/cheapest available). But because of the generally lower quality and other issues, I'd never buy a motherboard with onboard *video*.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=13- 138-234&depa=0
Cheap, and has all kinds of things onboard. I've never heard anything bad about these.
Model
Brand BIOSTAR
Model M7NCG 400
Supported CPU
CPU Socket Type Socket A (Socket 462)
CPU Type Athlon XP/Athlon/Duron
FSB 400/333MHz
Chipsets
North Bridge NVIDIA nForce2 IGP
South Bridge NVIDIA nForce2 MCP
Memory
Number of DDR Slots 3x 184pin DDR
DDR Standard DDR 333 (PC 2700)
Maximum Memory Supported 3GB
Dual Channel Supported Yes
Expansion Slots
AGP Slots 1x AGP 8X/4X
PCI Slots 3
Other Slots 1x CNR
Storage Devices
PATA 2 x ATA 133 up to 4 Devices
Onboard Video
Integrated Video Yes
Integrated Video Chipset nVIDIA GeForce4 MX
Onboard Audio
Audio Chipset AC97 Codec
Audio Channels 6 Channels
Onboard LAN
LAN Chipset Realtek 8201BL PHY
LAN Speed 10/100Mbps
Max LAN Speed 10/100Mbps
Rear Panel Ports
PS/2 2
COM 1
LPT 1
VGA 1
USB 2x USB2.0
Game/MIDI Port 1
Audio Ports 3 jacks
Onboard USB
Onboard USB Connectors 2x USB2.0 (1x header)
Physical Spec
Form Factor Micro ATX
Dimensions 9.6" x 9.6"
And those that don't use shared RAM have damn little ... my neighbour's new PC has only 8mb!
:(
I've also heard of dumbassed drivers that somehow let Windows forget that the shared RAM belongs to the video chip, so it gets swapped out, and suddenly you've got half a blank screen.
Onboard video is an invention of the devil.
And outside of server boards, is a redflag that the whole board was cheaply made.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Ah, thanks, that may explain why sometimes onboard video doesn't disable cleanly. Evil, evil stuff!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I'd mod you up if I had the points.
Damn, I had some earlier today...
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
It means two important things: budget concerns and future planning. When I shop for a new computer, I pick out a mobo, cpu, ram, hard drive, and case, and I'm pretty much done. Contrast this to the good ol' days when I'd come home with a trunk full of small boxes and spent hours assembling it all and getting it to work.
More importantly, I don't have to spend all my money up-front. I generally pick up a case that's large enough for plenty of expansion, and a motherboard with lots of slots, with room for lots of ram, and room for the fastest processors out there. I can usually put together a decent box for $500, and it will do more up-front than any eMachines or whatever that you can get for the same price. As time goes by and I find new uses for the machine, I can always add those parts without too much trouble.
For my most recent box, I bought an Asus mobo, celeron, a gig of ram, and an 80 gig hard drive. Add a generously sized case with a capable power supply, and a heatsink and fan... It took me a whole day to buy and assembled that for just under $500, including tax. To top it off, I got it all at one store. I used an existing keyboard, mouse, and 19" CRT.
Today, that box has 160 gigs of HD space, two gigs of ram, a CD recorder, and a DVD recorder. Outside the box, I added a more comfortable USB keyboard, a wireless trackball, and a bitchen 19" LCD. I can't complain about the built-in video or sound; in fact, the mobo has either 5.1 or 7.1 sound, I can't remember which, and the video is quite fast. However, when funds permit, I plan to add a Firewire card and a SATA card (the only two things I can think of that this mobo doesn't have built-in). By now, I have a couple of thousand invested in this box. If I had to buy all those components at one time, I would have gotten a significantly less capable computer with significantly less options for future enhancements. Not to mention that it would have hurt a lot more to spend two grand at once.
Built-in stuff on mobos helps make this possible; I can buy a computer with pretty damn good performance for $500, and add more performance and capabilities with time as money permits. Good deal.
My old PDA is fine for what I need, and has got only a serial interface, hence I'd like my next computer to include a serial port :-)
Then get a USB2.0 to Serial adapter. I use them at work all the time and they are so much more flexible because you can have as many serial ports as you want.
My old Printer is just fine.
So is mine. I have an HP LaserJet 4L that is about 12 years old. I'll still use it in the future too. They have USB to Parallel adapters. They do not cost a lot.
My mouse I have connected to the PS/2 port using a little converter because it feels more responsive in games compared to being connected to the USB port. While this is not a big factor for me, I suppose I'd like a PS/2 port on a new motherboard for the mouse.
"feels" more responsive? How technical. You want PS/2 on a new computer for a mouse because of how it "feels"? The latency of USB is in the microseconds.
My AT-type keyboard is connected to a PS/2 port because when I got my new (at the time) motherboard, a DIN5-to-PS/2 converter was cheaper than a new keyboard.
I'm surprised your keyboard has lasted that long. I have to replace mine at least every couple years or so just from wear. I have a PS/2 right now, but wouldn't mind spending $20 for a USB when it comes time.
My conclusion is: With a parallel port, you can only plug a printer into it. With a PS/2 port, you can only connect a mouse or keyboard. With USB you can connect ANYTHING to them. If you have 8 USB ports to start with you have much more options as to what to plug in.
I mean, if you really have all those old devices then why not just stick with an old computer to go with them?
Some SATA HDDs are actually IDE HDDs with an interface board built on top of them
Yes, this occured the first few months after SATA was released just to get something out the door, but most manufacutures are starting to build their own SATA specific chipsets now. The problem overall is still latency, not bandwidth with hard drives. Doing random seeks will never get faster unless you increase the RPM or number of read heads.
Don't buy a cheap motherboard. I bought two AsRock because a Linux shop in London (geekstop.co.uk) sold them as the low-end mobo. I never got the NIC to work on one, Linux won't shut down properly,
but the BIG PROBLEM is that whenever the CPU is busy, the sound is really crap, this includes playing games, and films. I can't run SETI and listen to music!
By the way, don't buy from GeekStop.co.uk. They don't know what they are doing. They installed faulty memory which showed up on a simple memory-tester. They sell hardware with Linux-problems.
temporarily sigless
I'm using them as a serial console.
All my
Also since most people here noticed I said most not all. I know serial is still used by some, and at work we have 3 parralell printers dot matrix printers. but personally I haven't owned a dot-matrix in 10 years. My only serial toy is my UPS. everything else is USB.
I noticed you said most, too. I was just giving a testimonial and a good reason to have a serial port.
Funny enough, one of the only USB devices I have is a USB->Serial adapter, because my laptop doesn't have a serial port!
Lots of other devices I have do make use of serial ports, though. Two Garmin GPS units and an OBD-II diagnostic reader, for instance.
I also have a parallel printer, but it has a micro print server conneting it to the network instead of a computer.
If I was designing a motherboard, I'd make everyone happy by finding a way to have some kind of removable modular ATX-style I/O connectors. You don't want the serial ports? Don't attach the adapters to the motherboard. Heck, there could be a jumper connection within the connector block itself that could tell the BIOS whether or not to even enable the port.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Just adding, the standard parallel port is very nice for when your nic breaks, especially on a laptop or similar. A simple home-made cable and you can have a 500kbps connection between two parallel ports, enable ip forwarding and possibly dhcp server on the host and you're ready to go.
I am trolling
Actually, a lot of applications still require the use of the serial port. Many security dongles ( little adapter-like thing that attaches to a serial port ) are required to unlock software.
I was a co-op for a tech company that required one to have one of these dongles attached in order to use an in-house utility, there's also a sound editing suite someone I know uses that requires this as well.
Check out http://www.baber.com/motherboards/intel_socket370. htm
There are some motherboards that don't have integrated video or LAN. They seem to be 3 times the price of the all-in-one motherboards, though.
the idea of amr was it would allow the modem logic to be on the motherboard but the final line interface to be on a riser (the final line interface has to be approved for the coutnries it will be sold in and this can be expensive)
but pci modems have become so cheap and work in all systems (economy of scale again) that its just not worth it to use the riser system
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
usb-serial/paralell apaptors do indeed exist never tried them myself so i can't comment on how well they work
theres quite a bit of kit (especially homebrew or speicalist kit) out there that uses the paralell port as general perpose io (you have 12 digital output pins and 5 digital input pins which you can use for pretty much whatever you want) i doubt this would get on very well with a usb-paralell adaptor
on the mouse issue i seem to remember reading that ps/2 mice have a higher scan rate than the usb version though i'm not absoloutely sure
also i've heared of chicken and egg type situation with usb input devices (ie it won't pick up the new device until you log in but you can't login without the keyboard or mouse)
finally if your keyboards really last that little time then you are buying shitty keyboards. a good cherry keyboard will last a very very long time.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Why not try the ACME Motherboard Finder
I can't find adecent board with more than 2 or 3 PCI slots these days.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Yeah, I plan on tacking a decent set of home-theater speakers to a computer and a projector. Y'know, when I win the lottery. (Until then, I'll settle for decent TV-out or a large flatpanel.)
Any idea how good Linux support is for this whole nForce-based 5.1 channel audio? What sort of motherboard or (grumble) standalone card I should get? Presuming I'm not an audiophile, and don't give two shits about the distinction between "good", "fabulous" and "audiophile quality" audio.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
...are destined to repeat it:
i'd not heard of this before.
You must be a bit young, or a bit new to personal computing. The first generation of personal computers were all implemented using a passive backplane architecture.
Nowadays chips are cheap so the whole system is disposable--if that multi-hundred-pin superscalar chip fries you just drop in a whole new board, which today becomes a full blown PC with the addition of CPU, RAM and HD. Back in the day even the primitive 6502 was several hours wage for most people and reliability wasn't as good, so integration was a bad thing--at least with cards if one blows there is a good chance the $1000s of other circuitry were still intact. Thus, you had a nice chunky cabinet full of cards---CPU, RAM, terminal I/O or maybe a video card, floppy controller, etc etc.
Industrial controllers are still almost always backplane-and-card setups to this day. Modern controllers have taken this to a new level and are typically hot-pluggable as well. In industrial settings, servicability and maximum availability are more important than lowest cost, so in any critical operation you won't see a PLC processor with integrated network, digital I/O, etc etc etc...'cause you'll never be able to hot-swap chips that are surface-mount soldered to a processor board.
You'll never find a cheaper all-in-one motherboard (or probably any motherboard) than the ASRock K7S41GX (apparently it's Asus' cheaper brand). The regular price of it is about US$45, and I've seen them go on sale locally for CDN$45, which amounts to about US$36! I've actually built close to a dozen office rigs with starting from a year ago, and all the machines have been rock solid.
A lot of the manufactuers are now releasing "trimmed down" MBs to fill the ultra low price point market, of course you will always find onboard NIC and usb ports, but it isn't too hard to find a MB with no video, sata, or audio...
It's called Mozilla ActiveX. You install Cedega and Mozilla on Linux, then fire up an embedding Windows app (like Steam), and watch it all work perfectly.
Maybe someone could port this to Windows/ReactOS?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Firstly, as other people have pointed out, not all motherboards do have serial and/ or parallel ports. Make that doubly-true for laptops.
Secondly, a significant proportion of users (note that word "significant", it's not "many" or "most", and includes "willing to pay") still require those hardware features. I had to do a hard-drive-ectomy a couple of months ago on a works laptop that we use to interface with about $20,000 worth of equipment. The necessary software required a classic parallel port to run it's dongle. No, we don't have time to dig out the source and re-build the security to use a USB dongle. It's easier to keep the old machine working. When the laptop dies, I'll have to bolt an antique desktop into the 55U 19" rack with the rest of the gear and I'll be glad that I left the space there.
"Most" users don't have to deal with that sort of question ; some users do. Those users who do have to deal with those things will pay for the hardware thay consider necessary.
A few years ago now, I had to trawl the Souk in Abu Dhabi to find a working CGA graphics card, because the program's wrote to those specific addresses. Found one; got the system back up and earning $350/day revenue ; earned my $500/day fee. But I'd have been stuffed if the hardware hadn't been available at all.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"