A Fond Look at Some Obsolete Ports

StealMyWiFi writes "C-NET.co.uk has a lighthearted look at ten of the best obsolete ports. The biggest surprise is that C-NET claims Firewire is obsolete, which will come as a surprise to the millions of people worldwide who are still using it, especially in light of the story that Firewire is due to get a massive speed boost! The same could be said for their claims about SCSI, although from a consumer point of view I guess that's fairer."

Comments

C-Net

[Etrias]

C-net couldn't find an obsolete port with two hands, a map and a flashlight.

Re:C-Net

[corbettw]

Which is ironic, since C-net, maps, and flashlights are all obsolete themselves.

Re:C-Net

[Anonymous Coward]

Cell phone displays.

Re:C-Net

[gardyloo]

Girls.

    Oh... sorry. I thought you said fleshlights.

Re:C-Net

[commodoresloat]

Nothing -- it's just that after Bill Gates was asked to change a lightbulb, darkness was declared the new standard.

Re:C-Net

[Beardo the Bearded]

Yes. They're very enterprisey now.

You aren't still using a plain flashlight with an incandescent bulb, are you? ;)

Re:C-Net

[bXTr]

And where is RS232?

It went with R2D2 and C3PO to sneak aboard the Death Star.

Re:C-Net

[TapeCutter]

FTFA : "it's nearly impossible to say PCMCIA at all, without getting all the letters jumbled up and your technological pants tied in a knot"

I agree, he didn't do his reaearch. The quote above describes an early marketing bug, a meme was quickly released with the following solution...

PCMCIA = "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronymns"

SCSI isn't what it used to be

[eln]

SCSI wasn't any fun anymore once they put in auto termination anyway. Long ago are the days when you couldn't get your SCSI disks to show up, no matter how you chained them or where you put the terminator. The only way to get it working was to cut yourself trying to connect the third drive for the 500th time and bleed all over the cables while swearing loudly. After that, everything would work just fine. You see, the dark lord will not allow SCSI to work without a blood sacrifice.

Re:SCSI isn't what it used to be

[NMerriam]

Oh, come on. SCSI will *always* be fun, termination or not. Just the act of putting an adaptor on an adaptor on another adaptor so that you can connect a controller to a disk is an adventure. Just calculating the minimum number of adaptors you need to own to be able to connect any two arbitrary SCSI devices could keep Stephen Hawking busy for an afternoon.

SCSI is one of those technologies where you inevitably wonder "how can engineers be so brilliant, and yet so colossally stupid, at the same time?"

Re:SCSI isn't what it used to be

[calebt3]

I found it also helped if I sacrificed virgin RAM it helped also. Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.

My favorite obsolete port is #23

[stuporglue]

Although I've still had to use it in the last couple years for a couple of odd routers.

This cracks me up

[microbee]

Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.

Re:This cracks me up

[Archangel Michael]

Crap, I hate you. And my apologies to SNL, Chevy Chase and Jane Curtain but here it goes ....

USB you Electronic Slut

What about BSD ports?

[Anonymous Crowhead]

Netcraft confirmed their obsoletism years ago.

Re:What about BSD ports?

[Epsillon]

Still Alive, BSD version, sung to the tune of Jonathan Coulton's "Still Alive" from the game "Portal," originally vocalised by Ellen McLain in character as GLaDOS.

This was a triumph,
I'm logging a note here: Huge success,
We had to dummynet the heavy traffic,
BSD Unix (R),
We code what we must because we can,
For the good of all of us,
Including vendors as well,

But there's no sense arguing with licensing dinks,
You just keep debugging so the PR count shrinks,
And releases get done,
Raymond gets a new gun,
But despite this we are,
Still alive!

I'm not even angry,
I'm being so sincere right now,
Even though we got here first and beat you,
Now you say that we're dying,
And this is the year GNU succeeds,
As you make statistics up,
We are so happy for you,

Now these points of data made our code really shine,
And we're out of beta, we're releasing on time,
So I'm glad you think you won,
There's so much needs to be done,
But regardless we are,
Still alive!

So go post on Slashdot,
I think I'd prefer to read the lists,
Maybe you'll get your own kernel someday,
Maybe that Hurd thing,
That was a joke, ha ha, fat chance,
Anyway, this code is great,
It's so consistent and neat,

Look at me still gloating when there's -CURRENT to plan,
When it's said and done you'll know that we're the best "clan",
We are organised and clean,
We go where you've never been,
And you know that we are,
Still alive!

Believe me, we are still alive,
We're on the server and we're still alive,
We're on the desktop and we're still alive,
We power MacOS and we're still alive,
We're running routers and we're still alive,
Still alive,
Still alive!

So there. :)

They missed some obvious ones.

[ZombieRoboNinja]

The MS-DOS port of "Mortal Kombat" comes to mind...

Why is Kryten's groin on the list?

[jameskojiro]

He is going to built in the future, he is like totally super advanced by today's standards. Can a USB port whisk an omelette? NO! Can a SATA port trim a hedge? NO! Can a PCI-Express port vaccum off the sofa? NO!!!!

If you want a port that can interface with anything and do almost anything and plug into almost any sort of appliance, just ask Kryten to dry hump it and your wish will be fulfilled!

LPT port *sigh* oh them good ol' days

[beckerist]

My FIRST "networked environment:" Two computers, a bi-directional crossover LPT cable and some REALLY crappy Novell software. Definitely some frustrating times just to play Warcraft I against a single friend!

for nerds...

[nguy]

For nerds, it's obviously the "P" (male) and "V" (female) ports that are, for practical purposes, never used and hence obsolete.

I know, people like to make sure that their "P" port remains gleaming and in good shape by regularly polishing it, but, seriously, give it up guys.

mod parent insightful

[JamesRose]

I can't be the only one who found it poignant!

Oh, *that* sort of port.

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only person who was expecting things like port 17 (motd), port 70 (gopher) and port 23 (telnet - well, we can hope).

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[Anonymous Coward]

I always found that licking the connectors solved most of my problems.

That's pretty much a good rule of thumb everywhere in life.

Re:Anyone ever rip a running scsi drive out?

[OrangeTide]

... and that is the last time Neil was allowed at the data center.

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[pete-classic]

Yes, but did it help make the drive work?

-Peter

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you lick the male connectors or the female connectors?

Re:modem port?

[BrentH]

Which is, considering there's about eight people living in rural north america, a very likely option.

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[stonecypher]

You know, in some parts of the world, "connector" is a phrase for public bus, which makes that advice ... curious. Then again, in other parts of the world, public bus is a phrase for connector. So whatever.

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[Mr. Underbridge]

Corollary: if licking on it doesn't help, blowing will. Always good for Nintendo cartridges and...um...other things.

5200 RPM drives

[Nimey]

Hardly, ignoring that the author meant 5400 RPM. In the Windows 3.x days our IDE hard drives were 3600 RPM and didn't even use DMA or multi-sector reads. We thought we had it good because it'd take over 100 floppies to store the same amount of data.

You tell kids that nowadays, and they wouldn't believe you.

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[Beardo the Bearded]

You had a Girls Gone Wild NES game?

Huh.

Re:Very unfair to SCART

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like your sig has some validity to it... :-)

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[Nimey]

And... spit or swallow?

Re:obsolete

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I realize this is slashdot and all, but I'm not really sure that dial up modems were really ever in fashion. Never really heard of a modem fashion show with models wearing modems for clothing. Thats not something that I would ever recommend. Internal modems do not good under garments make.

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about sodomizing the ports with a penis.

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[catmistake]

Well, you're right, but... its just... listen, fw400 beats USB2... its nearly twice as fast for most applications, but fw800 simply decimates USB2. They are in different classes altogether. For a long time, and afaik still, there isn't even a drive out there that can max out the bandwidth available over fw800. Its sick. So if you please, enough of the understatements. Does anyone compare USB2 to SATA? There's a reason they don't. And for the same reason it is unfair and silly to compare fw800 to USB2. Its like comparing a diesel VW bus to the Space Shuttle.

a proper Lunch

[Tumbleweed]

since when has Lunch been a proper noun?

If what you eat for Lunch doesn't deserve a capital L, then you're eating the wrong food.

Re:Very unfair to SCART

[mctk]

All Americans suck because their TV's are 20 years behind.

Re:modem port?

[try_anything]

This joke shows ignorance. There are actually more people living in rural America than in urban areas. --

Use saferdomainsearch.com [saferdomainsearch.com] to safely search for domain availability.

Use google.com to safely search for accurate information about American demographics.

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[slartibart]

USB can never "flat out beat" Firewire for one reason: isochronas transfers.
 
Um, "isochronas"? Let me guess, you've heard the word "asynchronous", but never seen it in print?