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'Legacy-Free' PCs Appearing Everywhere
gjt writes "Finally. The death of of the ISA slot is near. Red Herring is running a story on the Legacy Free PC. Plug all of your mice, keyboards, joysticks, modems, etc. into the Universal Serial Bus. Compaq is releasing a computer called the Vista which will do just that. Yes, Apple did that over a year ago with the iMac and PCI based G3 and G4. Of course, if you're like me, you'd want to build your own box. Asus makes legacy free "PC 99" compliant motherboards. I wonder if this means more IRQ numbers. And what's the state of USB and Firewire support in Linux?" Suddenly USB is everywhere. Will it take hold? A lot of PC manufacturers sure seem to think so.
USB is up and running just fine in the 2.3.x series of kernels.
There is even a backport of the USB stack into 2.2.12 right here
Also check out the USB HowTO for getting started.
And the main Linux-USB page is www.linux-usb.org
USB is nice, but I'd like to see more FireWire.
PC's are aiming for the mainstream, and most consumers will not miss support for the legacy hardware. As long as the computer has a modem, and capabilities for peripherals such as printers and joysticks, the computer is appealing to the masses. USB supports all these technologies. For more high end customers, FireWire will complete the package. Apple realized this a long time ago, and the rest of the world is following suit.
Sig goes here
Sure USB will become a standard. Some hardware vendors
are offering more USB Scanners (for example) than SCSI ones.
I understand the latest development kernels have USB
support, but support for specific devices is a bit patchy
USB (seems to) work on the mac, but the most popular OS that supports USB has, well, dubious reliability. Mice and keyboards don't gain much, if anything, by using USB vs. PS/2 ports. I've even heard horror stories from USB periphs in Be, which has official mice and keyboards.
.INFs before I see this as a real replacement to my PS/2 ports.
Don't know about BIOS-level support, but the drivers need to give us about as much flak as the current keyboard
For a PC to be truly legacy free what must you get rid of?
[could_be_dead_wrong]
AFAIK....
ISA
PS/2
FDD
serial and parallel ports
...and anything that uses an IRQ.
once we get rid of these, we might get a performance gain on non-legacy busses, etc.
[/could_be_dead_wrong]
Anybody know more than I do?
What makes them great is that at long last we have a virtually limitless number of slots for devices. 127 on a USB bus, 63 on a Firewire bus. Only problem is, it's not getting implimented correctly. For example, vendors are making USB hard drives and removable media drives. USB was NOT designed for this. It's certainly faster than serial connections or good ol' ADB, but it was designed for low bandwidth peripherals, i.e. modems, keyboards, mouses, printers, cameras. I'd love to see more Firewire devices (especially sotrage) out there...bye bye SCSI!
two words: limited option. how about if we don't like it?
--
You're a cartoon of rebel! You're all like exaggerated version of yourself! - Gerard Jones
I don't know you, but with only 15 IRQs I prefer to buy ISA cards which still use jumpers so I can control which IRQs I want to use.
/dev nodes for every possible piece of hardware I can plug in my machine?
And this is because my BIOS is so "SMART" that it does not want to use the IRQ 12 for a PCI card even if I explicitly specified not to use any serial mouse neither it's IRQ (12). The same happens with the second serial port and IRQ 3.
So if I want to use any of these IRQs I have to use a card with jumpers and set them to either IRQ 3 or 12 or 7 (the parport) and this is the only thing I can do if I begin running out of IRQs.
What will happen when I am no longer able to purchase a MB with ISA slots where I can use jumpers to choose the IRQs I like for my cards?
What will I do to all the ISA cards with jumpers I have purchased during the years?
What will I do if Linux USB support and Fire Wire support are not ready yet when that moment arrives?
Will some day Alan Cox and Linus say yes to Devfs so I can know with more accuracy where to find my USB, SCSI and Fire Wire devices without the need to have 10 000+
--
USB is already being skipped over for Firewire by most of the higher end video cameras. For a short time maybe you'll see these USB-only boards, but it's not going to be long before we have USB & Firewire boards. Now if I could just get a toaster to plug into a USB, I'd be set.
In my last post I wrote 'Fire Wire', but now I've just read 'Firewire'.
Which of them is the correct one?
--
Well, you *have* heard of eternal, havent you :)
Actually, if this is a problem for you (like is is for me), then the answer is obvious : Get an old box, like a 386, drop on a modem and an NE2000 and IP Masq it.. not that I've got my set up to work yet or anything **grin**
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
Ok... I have some ISA cards. I admit it...
they're not all that bad and I'll always have hardware around
that can use them...
I do like seeing pci only mb's out there and will welcome a
wider acceptance of usb (let's get those prices down) soon.
I, however, don't see myself using something like that for a few years yet....
RANT!!!!!
Am I the only person out there that refuses to buy a damn
celery or p-II p-III system because they don't have any
freakin boards that DON'T use that atrocity called
PS/2 ???
KILL IT!!!! What kind of a freakin moron came up with the idea
of an architecture that REQUIRES a freakin REBOOT when the device
comes unplugged??
I LOVE the fact (with my old AT style keyboard) that I can unplug
EVERYTHING from my server after setup... and....
if I ever (god forbid) HAVE to physically sit on it for something
I can't do over the network... I can just plug in my keyboard
monitor and SERIAL mouse (if necessary) and go to work.
Hello!!! Isn't there ANYONE else out there that agrees
that PS/2 must die?
End Rant... *sigh*
Thanx a whole freakin lot ibm... and thanx to the idiots
in the industry for continuing retarded architecture.
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
For the moment Firewire seems to be relegated to Macs, Sony laptops and people willing to buy expensive Adaptec (or similar) cards. Intel simply arent interested in Firewire because they believe USB2 will support higer speeds and remain backwards compatible.
I see this as a bit of a shame - Firewire is a good system - it can act peer to peer without needing hubs which USB can not manage. It's being adapted by alot of domestic AV equipment manufacturers - we're starting to see DV decks with Firewire in/out - couple a Digicam and an iMacDV to one of thses and you have amazing picture quality and a nice looking PC to boot.
Personally I dont think that the domestic PC market would be worried about having 2 different busses for use externally - after all we've survived having 2 legacy keyboard connectors 2 (3 if you count the old busports models) different mouse connectors, 2 ize serial sockets, seperate printer sockets and as many SCSI connectors as you can shake a very big stick at - as long as connector A doesn't plug into connector B the consumer will be happy.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
Ugh, yet again, as much as I hate it, Mr Gates's Platform is going to be quite a defining factor in the future of these technologies. I work for an OEM and always like to keep up with whats going on technology wise (even though we are a WinTel only OEM) and looking at Windows Millenium proves that ISA and other legacy standards surely have to die a death, not that long after the product is released. From what I can see, the only difference in Windoze Millenium (apart from more pointless gui touchups and changed icons) is the removal of all legacy driver support and access to true DOS at bootup. Mainstream OEM's work to the guidelines that MS and Intel set out, they have very little choice but to follow the rest of the herd as Joe 6Pack wants a PC with the Intel Logo and Windows Flag. One day this may well change (for the better) but for now Linux is doing a good job at catch up, so I dont feel we have much to worry about with regards to lack of support from the OS.
There's nothing wrong with FDD and Serial. I know whole companies that are not upgrading their Macs simply because they require floppy drives. Floppy drives are useful. They are a universal standard for transportable data. A text file on a floppy can easily be read on Sparc, Intel, Mac, SGI and most other hardware you care to mention. Sneakernet is a useful out-of-band comms system for use when the network is down or not there.
Serial is similar. Serial is still the default way of connecting to a massive range of hardware appliances, from robots to burglar alarms, to telecoms hardware. Having just designed a large server farm, I can testify to the usefulness of Serial as a fall-back remote access channel.
Removing floppy drives from computers because they have USB and Ethernet is about as smart as removing the staircase from a 20 story building because it's got plenty of lifts in.
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Not to deride USB or anything, but it looks like its starting to become a gimmick rather than a possible hardware solution.
Yes, USB needs to be marketed by all the industry giants so it can undergo price cuts in respective hardware and get a real chance in the market. But the primary marketing point of a PC shouldnt be that it is USB exclusive. Just cause Apple got lucky with the IMAC (though that was more of an image thing) doesn't mean every vendor out there should be trying to shove his own legacy free rig in the marketplace. "Sure we used outdated, low-quality components and configured them poorly, but IT'S LEGACY FREE!" Look at Apple's original Imac for example: outdated graphics card, lack of writable media, limited RAM... they were clearly wrapped up in product image while ignoring major hardware features. Obviously companies should care more about installing quality hardware and giving customers a wide range of hardware and software options than about whether or not their boxes are perfectly legacy-free.
Also, legacy free pc's bring up a more important issue: lack of choice. Granted USB has so far proven sucessful in the area of scanners, digital cameras, and other peripherals... but that doesn't mean USB should become the sole medium for periphals as a whole. I don't see why ps/2 needs to be replaced urgently... as my old mice and keyboards always worked fine. Plus even if the new rig doesn't come with any compatible periphs, I think ISA and PCI slots should be available should the user feel like adding something (perhaps an old modem, I dunno). Then theres the whole USB/non-windows OS deal. I hear USB is coming closer to full compatibility with Linux, but I still see the normal share of competent Linux using netizens who can't get some USB device set up properly. Of course there's also other Os's, such as BeOS, of which I have no idea how much compatibility with USB is there. But I think it is clear that USB was designed with mostly Windows in mind. And of course this could reduce the number of future non-windows users if all the budding Linux newbies found USB conflicts on their new legacy free boxes and returned to Windows in annoyed frustration.
Bottom line: As good as USB may be, it shouldn't be employed as a giant marketing strategy, nor should it be forced on everyone. If it truly possesses the merits acredited to it, USB will suceed eventually.
Can DOS handle USB?
My main system is DR-DOS 7.03 and Linux. Wonder
if DOS will be able to use any USB devices..
[g33k@sliver:~]$ cat /proc/interrupts CPU0 CPU1 0: 3195058 2881352 IO-APIC-edge timer 1: 29332 29516 IO-APIC-edge keyboard 2: 0 0 XT-PIC cascade 3: 1456 1678 IO-APIC-edge serial 8: 0 0 IO-APIC-edge rtc 12: 78010 100546 IO-APIC-edge PS/2 Mouse 13: 1 0 XT-PIC fpu 14: 17934 30048 IO-APIC-edge ide0 15: 11 23 IO-APIC-edge ide1 16: 1633492 2013057 IO-APIC-level bttv 17: 21 23 IO-APIC-level aic7xxx 18: 98737 100496 IO-APIC-level eth0 19: 0 0 IO-APIC-level es1370
Michael Dikkema Systems Administration Moot Technologies
You won't see a major shift in motherboard design until both of these factors are at least moderately better with a non-legacy system.
Right now (yes I realize this is a big generalization) - MOST ISA cards cost less than the equivalent PCI card. Likewise, ISA does not incur much of a performance hit with many of the peripherals. For example, sound cards, 10 MBps network cards, and modems / other serial devices will all work fine in an ISA slot.
Speaking of modems, I believe there was a recent discussion on Slashdot about them. There was note of the fact that few, if any PCI modems are made that are not Winmodems. So if you're rigging up an all PCI system with one of those, are you really gaining performance? I doubt it.
So in order to maintain what amounts to a marginal performance boost, you're going to use an external modem. This is, once again, more expensive, which goes back to my initial point.
I can think of much better ways to improve my system performance for the same amount of money.
Best regards,
SEAL
argh. sorry about that. Point was that with the abit bp6 you get 24 irq's.
Michael Dikkema Systems Administration Moot Technologies
Actually, the ES1370/1 line of PCI sound cards (Ensoniq AudioPCI / AudioPCI 97 & Creative SB 16 PCI) are extremely nice with Linux. You get dual DSPs (one full-duplex record/play, one play only), they are very well supported, and you don't have to deal with jumpers / soft-settable / ISA PnP to get it working. Just drop in the board and compile drivers - or insmod them if your distro is built that way. Dunno about PCI modems. Heard that the Diamond PCI modems are nice, but I haven't had a chance to try one in Linux. Matters not to me anyways, DSL is cheap and readily available in my area.
I heard that despite the USB style connector 'USB' keyboards are still PS2 underneath and the USB controller on the mobo emulates a PS2 controller.
Anyone know if I was hallucinating?
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Just boxes on your desktop hooked together with USB or firewire .... that hot plug .... usb/firewire disks, cameras, (firewire) video cards, net connections, sound cards (usb/firewire speakers really), kbds, joysticks, ..... a brave new world - I can't wait 'till ISA is dead!
Last time I checked firewire's pretty close in speed to a backplane bus anyway - for a low end box why not get rid of all that empty space, slots etc - if you do that and only have external connections then you can build smaller form factor cases, get away from standard sized MBs. With no holes for cards you can do cheaper FCC (meaning cheaper MBs and cases). etc etc
With the push to much cheaper PCs this sort of thing is going to happen - even if it saves $10 on the production price to someone who's making 1M boxes/year that's $10M.
As to your other points: in general, I would agree, but there are times when at least serial ports are useful (though not to the average user). The rest? What for? I rather like ethernet printers:).
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Its seems from the article that Compaq is releasing the Vista, although it says in the slashdot jib that Dell making it. Did I read something wrong? Are one of these sources wrong? Hmmm.. Bortbox
PCI/AGP and USB are the big winners here and I expect will be the main stream for the next few years. Low end machines will probably do without PCI slots (but will have a PCI bus between the chips on the motherboard).
Once, if you wanted to program anything more than the simplest stuff, you learnt assembly. Then along came Intel's hideously complex assembly language and that went out of the window. The speed of computers today has taken some of the sting out of this however
The ISA slot for all it's naive simplicity was exactly that, simple. I designed and created an analogue-to-digital card for the ISA slot in little over a week (part time for degree project). Where is the place for this kind of stuff with PCI/USB/Firewire? Where does the home hobbyist plug in their projects?
I guess I'm not really complaining. Things progress and change and legacy hardware really isn't much excuse to keep a standard going for more than a few years. I just think it's a shame. I guess I hark back to the halcyon days of 8-bit computing where everything was laid bare, (home) computers booted straight into their programming language, machine code just meant a few pokes and the bus lines usually poked out of the back of the case to plug things into. After all, isn't it on this kind of hardware where most current software engineers cut their teeth? It's certainly often quoted for the high degree of computer literacy in the UK. I just worry about the growing tendency to insulate users from what a computer really is. After all, someone has to develop the hardware and write the software of tomorrow.
I'm probably just getting old.
Rich
Consider too, the iMac would be a natural for firewire but Apple doesn't ship iMac with firewire.
The current base model iMac doesn't have FireWire, but the DV and DV SE models both ship with dual FireWire ports.
When Windows goes into Safe Mode, it does not load any "unecessary" drivers--including USB! So everyone that goes out and buys these USB-only motherboards are going to have a *lot* of fun. How on earth do you manipulate a computer without a keyboard or a mouse? (Another example of Microsoft brilliance!)
Here's a tip to all Windows support techs: Carry your own keyboard and mouse from now on!
I think a priori, this is not a good change as far as hardware is concerned. But something good may yet come from it: the bottleneck that going to USB and FireWire for expansion causes may finally propel the PC industry towards a more distributed and parallel architecture. In a USB/FireWire-only world, a novel piece of 3D graphics simply has to include its own general purpose processor that handles communications back to the PC.
Whatever its effect on hardware, this should be great news for Linux and other non-Microsoft operating systems. It looks to me that drivers for USB and FireWire-based devices ought to port much more easily between different operating systems. Many of them can actually even run in user mode. Configuration and resource allocation should also get simpler.
After the string of card changes the semi-nerd has had to go through it is unreasonable to think they will transition into USB. Sure it has it's benifits but will "Joe" go along? Heck he doesn't know USB from PCI from ISA from IRQ from RAM, forget about it's benifits, and he isn't in a hurry to find out. No, Joe is going with whatever he has when he opens the box. As for Mr. Nerd, it's cheaper and more useful (simultaneous use of burner and scanner for example) to have two computers linked in a network than to change to USB on your next upgrade---so what is thier incentive? Why cram 5 more devices through operating systems and chip speeds that cannot handle 3 or 4 operations at once as it is? Nerd or Not, most have made one or two upgrades since USB inception and have demonstrated virtually no interest in USB beyond that dictated by system manufacturers.
Interesting you bring up keyboards. I'm going off topic here, but if you have Win98 with a password on it, the USB devices used to get initialised after the password was entered, so if you had a USB keyboard, you couldn't type the password in, as it hadn't started yet.
My favourite thing about the USB connections on the side of my iMac is that it doesn't matter which one I plug the printer into and which one I plug the keybord into. It's all worked out for me.
Ease of use comes from simplicity and consistency. This has been evident in the software world for a while, now it's time for hardware designers and builders to take the same ideas and make them a reality.
-----------------------------------------------
my blog: good times, man, good times
This is an aside, but did you know about bus noise on USB? I went and bought one of those spiffy Intellieye mice (hey I hate having to clean mice balls) and the damn thing creates quite a bit of noise. It's recommended (unoffically) that you don't put it on a hub, as it may interfere with other devices).
"On the other hand, PCI isn't really all that fast anymroe anyway, so something had to change"
Well, On a Sun e450 the PCI bus is quoted at a 1GB/sec throughput, which seems pretty fast to me. Sure, there are buses out there that approach double this speed (used in SGI kit and such), but the low cost and wide acceptance of PCI makes it more useful.
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at the risk of sounding like a numbnut what's the current status of USB2? support under linux? I've heard numbers that put this puppy miles ahead of firewire.. -- .. cheers
Come on, this is getting ridiculous... .... Do you know that if you've got a 100tx network with isa cards (if you can find them... did they even make them?) , the network's bandwidth would overload your dog-slow ISA?
.... *CRUNCH*)
People asking "Do we really need a K7 @ 700Mhz" I can understand (even if I think "Yes we do") but ISA?
ISA is about as old a technology as can be found. Most PCI devices are cheap nowdays (sound, video and network cars.... you don't *have* to buy the latest TNT/SBLive/Gigabit ethernet card) so give me one good reason we shouldn't retire all our old machinery (which is starting to get *very* cranky) and buy new , not-top-of-the-line legacy-free machines.
Less problems, more driver patches (don't forget: all this new found OEM driver support for Linux is for *new* hardware) cleaner kernels.
No, I can't spell!
-"Run to that wall until I tell you to stop"
(tagadum,tagadum,tagadum
-"stop...."
With the supposed 'death' of ISA comes PCI sound cards and PCI modems (ala WinModem.) Now perhaps I haven't been keeping score, but are WinModems working in Linux yet?
now of all things in the article this caught my attention most of all. no matter how fast computers get they still take forever to boot up. this is one of my biggest pet peeve with the pc architecture. there really is no reason it should take so long, I know alot of the time is spent in the 'isolation' phase of isa PNP (its rather heinous), is there other factors in legacy hardware that cause the horrible boot up times?
http://notanumber.net/
Changed to 25 cents after mucho bitching...article here ---> eetimes
I have to agree with that last post, I have a main design machine, running Win98SE, It was running WInNT4.0 (sp5) but the PCI modem(Rockwell HCF) I was using would lock the system randomly, so I swithed to plain vanilla mark one Win98, that experienced the same problem, but more frequently, allowing about 25/30 seconds on line before locking everything up for the night, and sometimes not letting the line go when I tried a reboot.
Eventually got hold of a copy of SE and believe it or not got the same problems. I have since returned the modem card to the shop where I purchased it because it disn't fulfil the tasks it was supposed . Data communicatios processing
Stuck in a 56k ISA rockwell ACF and everything is hunky dory. If Windows can't handle winmodems, what hope does Linux have?
SkraggyA Skoda is for life, not for casual humour.
PCs usually implement a 33MHz, 32bit PCI bus, SUN-E450 also offers 66MHz and 64-bit PCI slots, which allows for 2x2=4 times as much bandwith (per PCI bus, the E450 has multiple). The only reason I can see why PCs don't implement these is because there is no need for them; the 33MHz/32bits PCI bus is fast enough for almost all applications (Except for video/3D cards, but they plug into the AGP bus, or the UPA bus on a E450). Until faster devices become commonplace for average Joe, I guess there is no need for a faster bus in average Joes machine.
Well, you're not completely lost in hallucination; but you're definitely fuzzy around the edges.
There's no requirement at all that USB keyboards still implement the PS/2 stuff. Many of them do anyway; for example, the Microsoft Natural Keyboards can work as a USB and/or a PS/2 keyboard. But that's just so they can sell to the masses that still don't have USB, not because of any technical requirement.
As for the motherboard emulating a PS/2 controller: Hardware-wise, this isn't true at all. Software-wise, many PCs with USB ports do have a BIOS with "legacy USB support", where the BIOS makes a USB keyboard appear to software as if it were an old-fashioned PS/2 keyboard. (Sometimes this support extends to USB mice as well.) This is done so that you can boot into MS-DOS and still have a working keyboard. But this is purely software-based, and can be disabled in the BIOS setup program.
Put a fairly feeble pice of equipment in a computer and hand out a (Windoze) driver for it. It worked sooo well for modems and now they want to make everything work like that.
Is Micro$oft behind this?
It looks like I might be keeping that K6-2/400 in my system for a long time!
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
There are many reasons for this to happen. The hardware vendors want it - even Intel. Microsoft wants it, because it will make the current monopolistic discussions sound nonsense - there will be no software market as we know to discuss after all. Imagine millions of devices being sold in small shops with Windows CE preinstalled... MS will use it size to pressure electronics device makers, in order to force WindowsCE on everyone.
The death of the PC is a very sorrow event for the OSS community, because it will make impossible - or impractical - to keep developing Linux. Close devices, closed specs, make impossible to develop drivers. Even worse - a home computer could be specifically designed to make it hard to change the operating system, keeping the user 'stuck' with the preinstalled one.
I sincerely hope that this nightmare scenario do not happen. Many things can change. Maybe the market will not accept closed, unexpandable computers - this was tried before and failed after all. The business users may opt to keep using traditional PCs. Even best... if bigtime electronics manufacturers start using Linux on their PCs as an alternative to Microsoft...
All I know is that we will see a lot of changes in the market in the next few years. In five yeras, both the PC and the Internet will barely resemble what we know today.
Obviously keyboards and mice wouldn't normally benefit from a faster interface (Ooh, I can type at up to 500 words per minute now!!!) but there is a benefit to the motherboard itself though. A computer is roughly divided into two busses and everything else hangs off of these busses. The front side bus is where you hang memory off of and is a high speed bus with very tightly controlled electrical characterisics.
The peripheral bus is typically a PCI bus. Every other bus you see advertised is actually a chip which hangs off of this bus. More things hanging off means more capacitance as well as more electrical power. So parallel ports, serial ports, keyboard ports and mouse ports all have a cost associated with them. More capacitance means its more expensive to design a board that transmits signals at a given data rate. These chips also consume board real estate.
So by building a 21st century motherboard that has less devices hanging off of the PCI bus would be a good thing. The USB port is responsible for more general purpose signalling at up to 12 mb/s: keyboards, mice, graphics tablets and maybe a floppy. The firewire port is better for high bandwidth applications without requiring a dedicated PCI card: video cameras, some forms of storage. A hard drive interface probably won't be going away any time soon as their bandwidth usage can be greater than FireWire.
The FDD interface is unfortunately useful on Windows. I found out how useful when Windows decided it didn't like to operate this weekend. Since I didn't have a Windows Setup floppy I was forced reinstall. There may have been a way around it but since the only thing I use Windows for is occasionaly upgrading firmware I didn't lose anything except time.
3 comments:
- As I see it, we dont need less IRQs, we need more! Sure you can share IRQs, but that means for any interrupt with multiple devices capable of generating it, you have to poll every one. With a single device per interrupt, theres no question of what generated it.
- even if you dump the ISA bus, ive yet to see a motherboard (x86) that provides a way to use more than 4 interrupts for pci slots. One thing I really liked about having an isa modem was that I could assign it an IRQ, and still have the 4 pci expansion slot IRQs to play with. Makes a difference when youve got 5 pci devices already.
- btw, can someone point me to some information on this claim that some X86 systems have more than 16 interrupts? Incidently, dont forget that not all interrupts are hardware interrupts (int 21h anyone?)
The 1371 isn't necessarily good. I have one, the Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI. It works flawlessly under Windows 98, but I can't get rid of the static under Linux. I've tried muting all unused channels and turning down the volume on all unused channels but there's still an annoying level of static. It's probably a driver problem with some unlabeled revision of the 1371, since it sounds great using Win98 dual booted on the same machine.
I wouldn't mind seeing ISA go, but as with many, I've got a good selection of ISA cards which I'm not quite ready to give up. I too prefer jumpers.
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Most of these "legacy free" PCs run off of Intel's crippled 810 or 810e chipset. As far as I know, there's no X driver for the 810. So if you're cool with no Xwindows on these legacy free boxes, that's fine, but I'd first make sure they had either a BX chipset or a non-Intel chipset.
The article seems to state that it's Compaq making the Vista. What's the deal with Dell?
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
I have to laugh when I see "hot-swappable" listed as a compelling reason to "upgrade" to USB. Yeah? My COM ports have always been hot-swappable. I switch back in forth between my track ball and mouse all the time and I'm sure as *hell* not going to reboot for that. PS/2 was a bad idea.
("I've got an idea! Why don't we make the keyboard plug look *exactly* like the mouse plug! Now *that's* ease of use...." "Great! Then we'll make it so that your system crashes whenever accidentally unplug a periphereal. They'll *love* that!")
ISA should definately die, and USB should probably take over as well, but software on the PC side is not to the point where we can make the USB plunge yet. Of course, it may take a drastic action such as this to *force* the software to come in line, but I pitty the poor users caught in the middle.
("Why can't I use my keyboard/mouse in safe mode? My display settings are messed up and I can't fix them! I'm stuck!" "This is a known issue with MS Windows, and will be addressed in the next service pack. Please wait patiently for your patch".)
*shudder*
--Lenny
Unless/until there are more than one or two PCI modems that are not winmodems, all linux users should be a bit worried. I know I am. My motherboard on the main machine at home has only two ISA slots, one of which is shared. And the box only has one ISA card: a modem.
I'm all for the PCI bus. One of the selling features of this mo-board was the small number of ISA slots. PCI is much better in most ways. In theory, firewire, USB, etc. is also much better. But I'm impatient for the kernel development folks to get it to work (and I don't hold it against them. It's their time, not mine.) I also don't trust the modem manufacturers to ship anymore 'real' modems in this new paradigm.
I did see one post on the modem subject (perhaps there were more, but below threshhold 1). It claimed that serial modems are going to go bye-bye. Let me guess: the same people that think that are the same people who giggle with glee over how cool ethernet in the dorm is. Guess what: some of us live in the real world, and don't have access to xDSL or cable modems. For many, serial modems are the only solution for a long time.
So while I will continue buying motherboards with as few ISA slots as possible, that means they will have at least one.
For a real modem.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Why should a manufacturer eliminate the ISA slots in a computer? If you want to avoid using legacy systems, simply do so, but don't deny me the option!
Here are, as I see it, the problems with doing away with the ISA slots as things stand today:
In fact, my game machine MUST have an ISA sound card, since the dual V2's, video card, NIC and SCSI take up all 5 PCI slots. If it didn't have ISA, it wouldn't have sound!
Now, I do want to address a couple of items I've seen mentioned in this thread about IRQs:
The only thing about USB/Firewire/I2O etc. that worries me is the "You want drivers? Yer runnin' Winders ain'tcha?" mindset most HW venders have. As an embedded systems designer, I am CONSTANTLY telling these morons "No, I am NOT running Windows, I am running a real time OS, and I need the programming specs for that! No, I CANNOT use the BIOS you provide, I am running in protected mode and your BIOS only works in real mode. No, I am NOT running Windows, weren't you listening the first twelve times I told you that?"
However, things are getting better with more HW vendors supporting Linux (therefor releasing source that I can adapt as needed to my needs).
And before you ask, while I am considering using Linux in several projects I am designing, there are other places where it just doesn't make sense, and therefor I have to adapt drivers, not install the RPM. Let's not get into the mindset of "You want drivers? Yer running Linux ain'tcha?"
PS: Rob, why don't you put a "Spellcheck" button on the post page? It would sure help us all out!
www.eFax.com are spammers
I belive I read in Scott Mueller's Upgrading and Repaing PC's that the traditional 15 IRQ system is a legacy of the ISA bus. In current systems, the PCI bus has it's own interrupt controller that has to be mapped to the ISA system for backwards compatibility. The legacy IRQ system could be completely discarded in a PCI only system. The PCI bus has only 4 interrupts, but unlike ISA, they can almost always be shared becuse PCI associates an ID with the device that generated an interrupt when handling it. Now, imagine the headaches of trying to configure one of these new systems, having to set every PCI card to use interrupt A, what a nightmare.
Furthermore, you wouldn't have to set jumpers to avaoid serial, parellel, and even mouse ports; that's the beauty of USB.
Life is pain. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
... about the iMacs revs a-c; for awhile they were the only computers with USB. As the only way an owner of one of those iMacs can attach peripherals is through USB, USB is a sound investment for all types of peripherals.
_____________
Personaly, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft pushed USB for all it's worth, to keep Linux out of competition for just a little bit longer, ensuring the standards and specs change just enough each version to break the Linux drivers.
Is it -really- the best way to go, to burn ALL the bridges, when in ogre territory?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No problem here on Win98 or Suse 6.2 running 2.2.13 with a 1371 - PII 450 with 128mb. Plug it in, compile the kernel and you're done.
It's a Unix system - I know this.
Only a matter of time if not already that some clever engineer will build an ISA bridge adapter for a PCI slot. Plug the bridge into the PCI slot plug the ISA card into the bridge. I'd put the electronics at a right angle to the PCI connector and make the shim height as small as possible. Or if one was really clever make an ISA expansion bus that uses one PCI slot, an external cable to an ISA backplane in a seperate cabinet with its own power. Plug all your ISA cards into the board in the cabinet and run from there.
USB and FireWire (IEEE-1394) aren't competing standards - at least they weren't designed to be. USB is designed for low bandwidth devices, FireWire for high bandwidth, with not a lot of overlap. USB is not offically a standard at all, in that the definition is still under the control of Intel. I'm not saying that USB is bad - but it is optimised for low bandwidth, right down to having cheap cables.
Then Intel gets this idea that they can have the whole pie to themselves (talk about a bob each way - they are part of the IEEE-1394 consortium too), so they bring on this USB 2.0 vaporware - the _specification_ due in a maybe a few months specifies something that maybe will (under ideal conditions) have a similar speed to that available with FireWire _now_.
There is an excellent article on this at:
http://www.MacKiDo.com/Hardware/USB2.html
Read that article if you think that USB 2 will be as good as FireWire.
If USB 2.0 succeeds, it will be on Intel marketing power, not technical merit.
OTOH, that hasn't stopped inferior techology before. I'm writing this on a G3 macintosh with EIDE drives, when EIDE ousted SCSI _not_ because it was in any real way better, but because the fact that it is the 'standard' in PCs made the drives a lot cheaper. I hope we don't also get the 'nearly good enough' technology of USB 2.0 in a similar way.
Roy Ward
You'll want the 2.3.x USB stack (which, like the first
post in this thread said, has been backported to 2.2).
But I use this heavily, and have had no problems.
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
I'm glad that some PC companies are following Apple's lead and getting rid of legacy technology. I know that there are many people that want to keep things like serial ports and ISA slots around so that they can use their old periphreals and stuff, but there are a significant numebr of people who want to see the computing industry move forward. Sooner or later the world has to change.
I have a new Blue & White G3 with USB & FireWire that replaced my 9600/200 PowerMac. Of course, I have a few SCSI & Apple serial devices that required me to buy a Serial->USB converter and a PCI SCSI Card.. but you know what, I did not mind. It was a choice that I made. The advantages of the new technology are greater than the inconvenience of having to buy a few PCI cards to support your legacy technology. If you want a parallel port on your legacy-free PC, there will be some manufacturer who will supply you with a PCI card or get a Parallel->USB Converter. Or, just wait a few more years to buy a new PC.
As far as the floppy disk is concerned... I have not used one in three years. I was very happy to see that thing removed from Apple's product line. I do not even use one on my WindowsNT machine at work and the HP-UX machine I also use does not even have a floppy disk drive installed in it. Everything exists peacefully on a network- a network that has had no significant downtime, other than scheduled maintenance since I have been working there.
I believe that this whole issue boils down to fear. A lot of technical people fear change (remember the quote from "Wayne's World" where Garth stared wide-eyed ar Rob Lowe's character and said "We fear change"). If you want to keep your legacy stuff around, that's cool with me. Just go out and buy the necessary converter cables and PCI cards yourself... just don't expect me (and others like me) to pay extra for a PC just to support your legacy equipment.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Perhaps somebody can help, I tried to get USB working with an Abit BP6 mobo. Just trying to get a Logitech mouse on it. The mouse was detected perfectly and is listed on the linux usb websites as being successfully used, however I failed to be able to get any action from it (yes, I already RTFM) and after some amount of trying it will predictably lock my machine hard.
The machine is not overclocked, if that's where your mind went when I said Abit BP6. I'd love any help with this as I haven't had time to do a full inquiry, as i can't SysRq back to get a clue since the machine appears to be locked in hardware at that point.
Of course this could also be a bug which is fixed in the past weeks since I've tried, in which case I apologize for the bandwidth.
Hey Coward, your info is way outdated. "...Apple doesn't ship iMac with firewire?" Are you kidding me? Go do some research! JBytes
I actually, honestly possess a USB-capable motherboard (Abit BH6) along with a USB keyboard, wheel mouse, and joystick on my game machine (win98 for now...). In the CMOS setup, I had first set USB support to come from the OS. While I had keyboard support in the CMOS after that, 'safe mode' and booting directly into MSDOS was a problem: No keyboard, no mouse. Changing that setting back to letting the BIOS handle the USB resulted in perfect performance in the CMOS setup, DOS mode, safe mode, and in regular win98.
Upgrading a component is simply taking out the old one and plugging in the new one. Preferably without turning anything off.
Drivers are passed around using a standard scheme (some sort of byte codes). There are well defined interfaces for everything (disks, sound, video, printers).
Sounds like a pipe dream? Look at hardware specs like FireWire and USB; basic software specs like HAVI and Jini. Higher level specs like X, OpenGl, NFS, HTTP. Think again.
The advantages of such systems over current ones is so great they are simply inevitable. It is only a question of how long companies invested in the current architecture will fight on.
The legacy free PC is a step closer towards this ideal. Oh, and don't ignore the PlayStation. It has VESA, USB, and FireWire connectors, and Sony is a member of the HAVI team...
- Video card
- 3D card (or two)
Aiming three PCI video cards at one monitor is a legacy solution.Or compile a recent Linux kernel with USB turned on. I've been using it for a while, it's nice :-)
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
While the ISA bus is seriously slow, there are several applications for which an ISA bus in easily adiquate. A modem for instance. Since a modem is far slower than even the ISA bus, there is no need to put it on a PCI bus. On the subject of PCI modems, does anyone make a non winmodem for the PCI bus? I have looked a little, and only found winmodems.
Sound Cards wouldn't seem to need that much bandwidth either. I looked at two soundcards once which were supposed to be the same 'model' one for ISA, and the other for PCI. The ISA card seemed normal, and had several IC chips on it. The PCI card didn't have any IC's on it. The most complex electrical component seemed to be a resistor. The sound card ran the speakers and not much else. All of the sound processing would have had to been offloaded back to the processor. The worst part was that the PCI card cost at least twice as much as the ISA card.
There are always legacy cards which someone may want to use. It is nice to have access to use some of those cards, even if the majority of the people don't need them. This is why MCA support has been added to Linux recently.
If I were to buy a motherboard (with no regard to price), it would have an AGP slot, at least 6 PCI slots, at least 2 EISA/VL slots (for those unfamiliar with the protocol, EISA slots can take ISA cards, and VL slots are a physical extension on the back of an ISA or EISA slot), and at least one preferably two MCA slots.
I like being able to put s piece of legacy hardware into my machine, even if for only a little while. I would use mostly the PCI slots, with maybe a card or two for ISA. If I wanted to try out a VL card, I could. If I wanted to try out an old MCA card, I could. If I wanted to try an EISA card, no problem.
On the other hand, I have heard that the ISA bus slows things down, even if it isn't being used. So losing it isn't all bad either.
There is a civil war coming in the United States. Remember which side has most of the guns
Yes, I know that it's often necessary to prune the old to make way for new technology, but I'm not at all happy with some of the directions PC hardware is moving in these days.
I *like* serial ports. I prefer serial mice to PS/2 (the unplugging issue). I have a very nice USR external modem that uses a serial port. I wish I had more serial ports - then I could hook up a couple of the DEC terminals sitting in my closet. Serial ports are also great for letting me null-modem files off all my old Atari machines. And though I just barely know my way around a soldering iron, serial ports aren't rocket science, and are an ideal interface for all sorts of hardware projects. And USB may be nice, but right now it still is in a state of Driver Hell. I have *never* found myself in a state of Driver Hell when using serial devices.
Likewise for ISA. ISA is way more hacker-friendly than PCI. And as others have said, 4-5 PCI slots often just isn't enough. I'm stuck using an ISA sound card at the moment because 2 video cards + ethernet + SCSI leaves me with room for nothing else. I know that when I upgrade my machine, AGP will fix part of the problem, and I can always opt for onboard ethernet and SCSI if I want, but I'm not entirely sold on integrated motherboard peripherals - if my network card goes south, I can just plug in a new one, rather than having to take out the whole motherboard.
In general, some of the new "friendly" or "economical" features of new PCs just don't sit right with me. The new Dell machines I've seen have only one serial port, and even better, won't boot unless there is a monitor plugged into them. What a *stupid* idea!
In any case, don't get me wrong - I think the idea of a machine with a tight, integrated architecture is a great one - I'm just not sure the PC is the best candidate for the job. The PC's strength over the competition (Macs, Suns, etc.) has always been its openness and potential for configuration. Get rid of that and you not only lose one of the platform's big selling points, but also have nearly two decades of legacy software and mentality to deal with.
Umm... Linux has had USB support since just after the iMac
came out (uusbd worked, though you had to patch it in yourself)
Now it's in, select it in make menuconfig. For onboard, you'll probably
need UHCI (intel chipset?), if that doesn't work, congrats - you
have OHCI (real hardware, no CPU abuse). But both should
work (I use OHCI).
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
I haven't read the entire series of replies to this story so I hope that I'm not repeating someone...
Does anyone else see this as a potential performance bottleneck?
Vendors are telling us that we will be able to plug everything from mice to hard drives into the USB. Do you really want to see your mouse freeze because you're in the middle of a large data transfer from a hard disk? Watch your mouse jump around jerkily because your scanner is transferring data?
I don't mind seeing ISA bus cards disappear so long as they increase the number of PCI slots!!!
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Hmm, I think that's how it is, at least for mices... I saw an USB intellimouse with a USB to PS2 converter.
_______________________________________________
There is no statute of limitation on stupidity.
I thought USB could supply some power over the wire, not sure how much. But then - I could be wrong. :)
Please update your FUD. Virtually everything you say is wrong. First, Firewire is more of a standard than USB (where is USB's IEEE certification?), second, the fee is $0.25/DEVICE, not $1/port, and third, This is not something imposed by Apple. There are, IIRC, 8 companies that hold patents on technologies used in Firewire, and that fee covers licensing of all necessary patents. Apple's share is unknown. Ironically, Intel, the company complaining about the fee for Firewire, it one of those companies.
Also, the new iMacs have Firewire (all except the $999 model).
As for Firewire being a niche product, yes, if you consider the entire consumer electronics market, the digital video market, and high-end consumer computer peripheral market, etc. etc. to be a "niche". USB is useless in the first two of those markets (it isn't peer-to-peer), and inferior Firewire in the third (yes, even USB2). USB was never designed to be a high speed interface.
Why is it that some people hate anything that Apple touches?
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I wonder - however "legacy free" the pc's are, there must be a serial (control for a lot of external devices, mostly industrial) and parallel port (dongles anyone?)
Grab an external serial modem and you'll be fine.
It might start on the Mac side. All desktop Macs except the supper low-end iMac now have Firewire. Plus the Mac hardware platform is much more limited, which makes getting things off the ground much easier.
There are rumors that by this time next year, Apple will be shipping Firewire hard drives standard in its high-end machines, and that would certainly encourage Linux to support it.
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I figured USB would become a vital feature. Isn't
it nice that there's a good, well-designed, free, set of drivers in the world?
I've been using USB devices on my laptop for months.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
agreed! our enterprise falls back on console/terminal xyplex servers for when everything else is dead.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
"A hard drive interface probably won't be going away any time soon as their bandwidth usage can be greater than FireWire."
Firewire is already 50MB/s, and will be twice that next year. Maybe there are some RAIDs that can exceed Firewire's real-world performance (which is probably something like 40MB/s), but it's fast enough for 95% + of external devices.
Machines really designed for video will probably have two Firewire buses, one for the DV stream and one for everything else. I believe Apple's new high-end G4s to this.
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I have made it out of the dial-out line days with the advent of DSL... But this could be a concern for linux users who do dial up. Are there any PCI regular modems (NOT WINMODEMS)? And if you blow away the comm ports there goes all support for the old Courier External V.Everythings I have 2 of.
Good luck trying to connect... this might be a good time to start working on Winmodem drivers/hacks.
-Steve
My intelligence insults itself.
PC 99 means you have to buy all new cards, HW, printers, etc. Mac did it all right. Yeah, they sure did. My mother's Mac just died. To get an iMac she will have to replace the working printer or pay 80-100 bucks for a USB to serial adapter. I couldn't believe they didn't include a serial port.
Dell has been doing this for about 6 or 8 months with thier Celeron based dimensions for home use. No ISA slots in these at all, just PCI.
thehermit
According to killerapp.com:
:)
ADS Technologies PYRO 1394 DV 3-PORT PCI OHCI 400 M/S HOST CARD - $87.89
That probably doesn't include shipping.
Also, Asus makes a 1394-enabled motherboard (the
P3B-1394, I believe it's called). Only 3 PCI slots, though. *sigh*
And what's with the article posting - Asus makes PC99 legacy-free motherboards? Uhh, I can't find any on their website. PC99 doesn't mean legacy-free, either, as you can still have serial, parallel, PS/2, and ISA on the motherboard. They're recommended to not, but that doesn't mean they can't. Maybe they've got a legacy-free board _coming_?
USB is one of the best things that happened to laptop computers, IMHO
In my experiences, USB peripherials hooked up to a USB hub make great docking stations for laptop computers. It dosen't matter who makes the laptop computer, or what OS you are using, if you can get the drivers for all the peripherials on the hub, you have a working docking station that is manufacturer neutral.
I've used the same full sized keyboard, wheel mouse, scanner, modem (yes usb modems are out there, and they are very small too)hooked up to a hub in a desktop type enviorment. If I'm not there (or even if I am), a coworker can walk up to the hub, pick up the cable (or unhook my laptop [I better have not been using the modem if he knows what's best for his health]) and suddenely have direct access to all the equipment.
The peripherials are out there, the hubs are cheaper than docking stations, and they are make/model neutral. It's a win-win situation.
This is just my opinion.
Joe Goldmeer
Back in the 486/586 era, it was pretty common for reviews of ethernet cards to include a "CPU Utilization" benchmark. ISA cards generally used 2 to 3 times the CPU of PCI cards. I don't know what you are paying for CPUs, but that $10 extra dollars for PCI ethernet is probably worth it in improved processor efficiency.
We're already seeing $20 USB mice -- it will be only a matter of time until all the cheapo stuff is in USB.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
While this a bit off-topic, ADB (Apple Desktop Bus), used in most Macintosh and some NeXT machines, also pretty much requires you to reboot every time you add a peripheral. It only initializes the bus at boot time, so any devices added after boot will not be registered. You can, however, remove a device and plug it back in without rebooting the machine and have that device still function, provided of course that you don't short the bus while doing so.
The above is true whether you run Mac OS, Linux, *BSD, or even BeOS on your system. That's just the way the hardware works.
IIRC, newer Macs with the translucent, multi-color cases don't ship with ADB and instead use USB for keyboard, mouse and other peripherals. I can't speak with authority here though, since I don't own one.
I, for one, will be ecstatic the day that IRQs are eliminated from PC hardware. That was a lame-o design if there ever was one.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
Do you have the original 98? I recently got a new machine with Win98 SE(Bug Fix, natch) and one of those wacky Dell "internet" keyboards with the extra dozen buttons along the top. The keyboard is USB and is up and running as soon as the power comes on - *and* it works in safe mode.
Wait until Sony starts including iLink (FireWire) on all of it's consumer electronic products - not just the Playstation, but TVs, DVD players, recievers. (Most Sony computers come with iLink too.)
Perhaps then the applications will be more obvious, and we'll start to see greater adoption.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I remember the Atari serial bus, on the Atari 800. When you cut the number of wires for communication between devices, you cut the bandwidth. Also, it was a lot easier for hardware makers to jump in bed with copy-protection-oriented software makers (like MICROSOFT where Atari machines were concerned.)
I know that ISA is aging, and I know that USB is very popular right now, once the marketing pressure came to bear. But I wonder about its future. Will the spec prove inadequate when people start cramming on the hardware? What about disk drives (as some posters have said here already.)
I guess if people get used to the idea of a serial bus, and event-driven hardware support, maybe things will work out once the serial bus actually gets fast enough. Ya think people will ever learn enough to make fiber cabling work commonplace and easy?
And what about all these machines around right now. What do we do--throw them in the garbage can? Really environment-conscious, aren't they?
I really hate pushy people. The people behind USB are starting to grate.
--------------Rev. C.C.Chips---------------- For the real truth, visit
Will there be a market for PCI cards which provide a "virtual" ISA bus to support legacy ISA cards?
Agreed. In particular, the "cascade from IRQ 2 to IRQ 9" hack that the IBM/AT used should be layed to rest. A single interrupt controller with IRQs from 0-63, or even 0-255, would be fine.
Cleaning out the BIOS would be nice too. Linux doesn't use it much, and I suspect that Windows doesn't use it much either. For one thing, most of its a bunch of obsolete real-mode rountines, and you can never count on them working anyway. Nobody wants to spend time patching around BIOS related bugs in their software; its easier to write your own routines than try to deal with several hundred different implementations in BIOS, some of them almost certain to be incorrect and buggy. IMO a minimalist BIOS would be best: just find the hardware and inititialize and test it.
TedC
Firewire board: ADS technologies - 90.00
DV Camera: Sony TRV 310 - 750.00
Not cheap, but not out of line either, especially for the video camera. A Sony Hi8 is around 500 bucks. A cheap analog capture board can probably be had for 100 bucks or so.
Firewire drives are expensive but all the ones I've seen are geared to laptop users (fits in a pocket and no external power). You're paying a premium for features you don't need on a desktop or server.
Get rid of IDE/ATA for mass storage, go with SCSI or IEEE 1394 (actually an evolution of SCSI).
IDE/ATA is horrible. Just crap. Everyone says SCSI is more expensive - but if there was no more IDE, then not only would SCSI be able to take advantage of "Economies of Scale" like IDE has, (making it less expensive), but there'd be nothing to compare it to (making a comparison obsolete anyway). Then everyone could enjoy the benefits of SCSI; flexibility, no drain on your CPU, scalability, compatability, etc.
Everyone complains about "SCSI Voodoo", but that's nothing compared to the virgin sacrifices I've had to make to get IDE to work (adding drives, doing the master/slave thing, trying to get multiple CD-ROMs or CD-ROM/Burner setups to work right, trying to find spots in crammed cases to PUT IDE drives, since there's no option to go external, as with SCSI).
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I am reminded of the IBM PS/2 series when I think of this. Microchannel was supposed to wipe out ISA, and OS/2 was supposed to wipe out DOS.
;)
So what happened? The public dumped IBM and PS/2 and OS/2 and went with DOS/Windows ISA based IBM PC/AT clones instead!
So shall it be with Legacy Free PC Systems! So it is written, so shall it be!
Currently none of the PCI sound cards store sound samples in RAM, which is a feature I rely on very strongly with my AWE 64. I'm always going to look for motherboards with at least one ISA slot so I don't have to give up that functionality. Watch out for the functionality and useful features that you lose forever when 'legacy' hardware is phased out...
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Perhaps you should try NetBSD. It has had USB support for about 1 1/2 years now.
USB is a technological step backwards. Its only reason to exist is to make connections of peripherals easy for idiots-- notice I did not say idiot-PROOF-- USB is not the great panacea Intel and Microsoft says it is. Plug-and-Play can stumble and fail with USB.
And consider that the highest speed USB is capable of only 12 Mbps, while ordinary SCSI can do 40 Mbps, Fast SCSI can do 80 Mbps, Ultra SCSI can do 160 Mbps and Firewire can do 400 Mbps.
You can keep your USB, thank-you.
Erchie
Why am I flamebait?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Hey, hey, hey! :)
I'll have you know that "Hello World" can get pretty complex.
sub Hello(cancel as Integer)
'Pass the Prego. I see Spaghetti coming...
On Error GoTo e4:
'You're not a real programmer if you don't go through the win32api.
Declare Function SayHello& lib "fuckdoj" Alias "BribeJackson" _
(ByVal LScrewNetscape as Long, _
ByVal LDominateSun as Long, _
ByVal LBuryCaldera as Long, _
ByVal LTrial as ReallyLong) as Boolean
Declare Function GetActiveWindow& lib "User32" as Long
Declare Function CopyMem& lib "Kernel32" as Long
dim lHWin as Long
lHWin = GetActiveWindow&
if SayHello(lHWin, lHWin, lHWin, lHWin) = False then
msgbox "Hello world..."
Debug.Print "...And goodbye Netherworld-... I mean, Redmond. Muhahahahah!"
End If
exit sub
e4:
msgbox "This program has crashed. Oh yeah, and we are not a monopoly."
End Sub
Sorry for the obscure sense of humor. It comes with the MCSD.
Skevin
Database Design and Programming
The Walt Disney Company
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
ISA is one of the best buses for quick and dirty HW prototyping. It has zero protocol overhead to deal with to get an OS/BIOS to detect a card, its easily accessible from software (PIO and well defined programming specs for setting up IRQ channels), and its easy to interface/work with (I created my first ISA card my freshman year in high school) from a hardware perspective.
Besides its still an order of magnitude faster than existing USB, and all my ISA cards work under every significant PC os while USB/Firewire still don't really work under anything but win98 (I'm talking full support here). My $5 NE2000 clone and SB16 are my fall back hardware when my 100base PCI nic's and funny 3D sound cards don't work under Beos, NT, Linux, xxxBSD, QNX etc... Last thing I need is for my keyboard/mouse/modem/floppy etc to be incompatible too. It really bothered me that M$/Intel didn't force an ISA ver4 on the market when they came out with ISA PNP. They could have fixed things like optional slot select line (fixes PNP), level triggered interrupts, etc. They could have probably done it all with one of the extra pins. A v.4 pin when pulled hi indicates that the card is ver 4 compatible.
Of course what do you expect from a mob of corporations on a planet in a galactic backwater?
i've been using USB for over a year as my ONLY peripheral connector, and it rocks! currently, i'm using: i) mouse ii) keyboard iii) QuickCAM iv) Umax Scanner v) QPS-CD-RW vi) ZIP Drive -- plugged into a 7-port USB hub. it works! the mouse does NOT slow down when i am scanning or trasferring data from ZIP drive (it is actually smoother, because overall datarate of mouse is higher). i'm using them on a notebook (ibook), and to get all these peripherals plugged in, i plug in just ONE plug, and everything is connected - simple! people who want to keep their old connectors are LUDDITES! who in their right mind wants to continue to advocate five incompatible types of plugs when you can have just ONE??? just think about it for a minute -- in five years, you could still have: i) a plug for keyboard, ii) a plug for mouse, iii) a third plug for ZIP drive, iv) a fourth plug for scanner, v) a fifth plug for printer -- talk about stupid. replace all these incopmatible plugs with one universal plug that is interchangeable between ALL perpipherals -- heck ya! its a done deal for me. i've been on this system for over a year and would never go back to the stone-ages of all those crummy and incompatible legacy connectors and all their attendant configuration headaches. johnrpenner@earthlink-NOSPAM-.net
Good Lord, ISA?
The same kinds of people concerned with ISA slots still well believe that its necessary to keep around a 5 1/4 floppy drive.
While you _may_ have some of this foo still around, it begs the question - if its still in that form - and you haven't updated yet, what makes you think you'll need it later? And if it was that important, you'da done something about it by now.
We all have old legacy hardware and software... so keep around an old legacy system to deal with it! I have a old IIci lying around just so that i can run some old system 6 music software i don't want to upgrade because i need it almost never.
USB - its here, (its queer), and it works on everything but NT 4.0 (hence, no one cares). Apple is going to have a beta of its "USB driver database" up and running soon - plug in a usb device, you don't have the driver? Autodownload and autoinstall.... why not an open systems approach to this? Why the hell isn't usb.org providing this all-friggin ready? The time has come to invent solutions rather than bitch about problems.
USB 2.0 will not happen... so i won't go there.
Firewire - its here. Its expensive - but what isn't the first go around? And who cares right now, we still have ATA. (Now, a universal ATA/Firewire adaptor... that would be something...) Eventually, drives of all kinds will be Firewire. You will not have USB CD-RWs and USB HD's... these were done soley as a gapfilling measure for iMacs and should be done away with ASAP.
Living on a Mac teaches you a few things.. one of which is that sometimes, you have to lose a few things to gain so many more... no one died without serial on the iMac... and no one is dying without it on the PowerMacs..
if you NEED these legacy things... adaptors get built and sold and people make money. Look at the USB section at frys if you need proof of this. They have USB adaptors for shit i didn't even know anyone cared about still.
I have Firewire, USB, SCSI-2 (on a PCI card), and 100bt ethernet, Airport, AGP and 1 open PCI/66 slot left.
PCI/AGP - graphics and cards
Firewire - highspeed devices
USB - low speed devices
ATA/SCSI (unfortunately, until FW picks up) - drives
Ethernet - for ethernet
Power - power
What are you missing in this list? What are you still buying that doesn't havea plug for one of these interfaces?
And if it doesn't fit on all that - is there an adaptor to legacy me back? - yes, yes there is.
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"I know kung-fu."
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Um, last time I glanced over at my bookshelf. I have a Zip disk set up with a System folder and hard drive recovery tools. I can pop the disk in and boot from it quite easily.
Oh, right. This is for my Mac, of course.
The 3Com 5610 for example, has been verified to work in Linux.
A HOWTO for mapping PCI modems to the /dev/modem port and a list of PCI non-winmodems can be found on the PCI modems and linux page.
Why would we need more IRQ lines? A really nice aspect of PCI designs is that IRQs can be shared through IRQ steering. this way, your Net card, voodoo cards, and SB Live can all live on the same IRQ peacefully. This is, of course, assuming that your driver implemnattion is good.
I got the QuickCam Pro USB, which is a 640x480 color camera. It's a nice little thing to plug into the USB port I've got on my laptop.
I've found that most webcam software (for Win32) cannot distinguish two identical devices on the USB "bus". That is, I can't plug two QuickCam Pro USBs to the machine, and have software choose which camera to watch.
I don't know enough about how USB works (does each device choose its own ID, or does the software tell a device to use a dynamic ID, or what).
Anyone else play around with this on Win32 or Linux? Same results? Same problems? Actual solutions?
In the same vein, perhaps as a solution, another device I'd like is a *controllable* USB turnswitch. Tell the switch (via USB) to turn on ports A and B, but turn off ports C and D. I know they'll have to make something like this if keyboards and mice all use USB; the five-servers-one-head cabinets all use Serial/PS2 switches now.
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All USB controllers (UHCI & OHCI) provide a "legacy emulation mode" (its in the specs) that allows them to do simple "boot protocol" keyboard stuff on the bus. This allows for the BIOS and DOS to operate correctly with a USB keyboard without needing USB drivers as they just see a regular keyboard interface.
Many legacy modes are annoyingly buggy, but its just designed to be used until the OS loads some real USB drivers (try unplugging and replugging your keyboard or keyboard on a hub while in legacy mode).
- a linux-usb developer
What is it about these legacy free PCs that allow instant boot capabilities, isn't this mainly a software problem, or are they just talking about suspend?
Spencer Ogden
Well, in a non-legacy solution you'd be ridding yourself of three PCI video cards for one AGP or one PCI solution.
EXTREMELY correct. I'm doing the same (MatMilII + 2 x V2 -> v3 3000) myself. Mostly because the crossconnects are a pain.
Your sound could very well be offloaded onto USB, as could your modem, if you use modems.
I dislike USB, as it's not supported in NT4 (hello, Micrcosoft, anyone home? NT5/2000/whatever-its-called-this-week wont be out for a bit, and I'd like to use those USB ports please). But it's a good point, as not everyone is running a dual CPU board like I am, which requires NT for graphics stuff in Photoshop (yes I'm moving to gimp) and Adobe Illustrator (REQUIRED for my class), and linux for real work and games.
Seriously. Whoever marked this as flamebait really needs their head examined. It was concise, to the point, and EXTREMELY on topic. Go read the moderation rules again.
--jd
"To err is human, to forgive is simply not my policy." --root
My home computer has no more stuff in it than a laptop but it has a heavy bulky steel case just to accomodate a few chips on separate boards (not to mention a rat's nest of ribbon cables). This is not a big issue since it is connected to an even bigger and heavier monitor.
But when LCD monitors become affordable I will be looking for a much lighter and more compact computer. I should be able to simply unplug my printer and network connection and carry the computer off to another room or to the cottage for the weekend. I envisage it being like an oversize laptop. I will not want a conventional tower case unless I absolutely need those ISA or PCI slots.
You haven't noticed the company is just a bit different now? The pro machines are just about easiest towers to open and work in on the market. Even the new iMac makes it easy to get at the DIMMs. And the core of Apple's next generation OS is open source software. The modern Mac doesn't even have a single proprietary port on the back.
What is "anti-tech" about all of this? Apple has radically changed at least twice since the introduction of the Mac. It can hardly be considered the same company it was in '84.
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This space unintentionally left unblank.
Even though it didn't succeed commercially, i find it funny that most ATX boards have PS/2 ports for Mouse and Keyboard instead of the Serial / Din connector that we used to use.
(I just upgraded from a p166 to a PIII 500 and had to get adapters for keyboard and mouse cause i like my old trackball and Next Gen Keyboard)
The MyTh - I am a figment of the Imagination - [Im Probably even not here]
When I decided to buy a new mouse a few weeks ago, I thought about getting a USB mouse rather than PS/2 because I play alot of q3 and wanted a fast reaction time. But it turns it USB mice are currently *slower* than PS/2 mice. Thus, I would never want to own all USB devices if the mouse is slower under that port. That stinks. Maybe firewire is faster- that would be cool.
ul|tma -At least we all use linux-
H-hi. My name is Outcat, and...I've got a problem.
It all started when I got a Gateway about six years ago. I was young then. Real young. And naive. It wasn't my fault that I saw ISA as the One True Interface. It was all I knew. Can you blame me?
I opened it up and saw slots. Little white ones, big black ones. Four ISA, three PCI. And wouldn't you know it...I had only one PCI card.
PCI. The mystery and misery of Plug n' Pray. And the total lack of anything working. I decided to hate PCI. For it hated me.
For many hours, I marveled over the wonder of ISA. The IRQ. The intricacy of jumpers and DIP switches. It was a beautiful thing...until it...took over.
I found an old Socket 7 motherboard. It had SEVEN EISA slots and 1 *true* ISA slot. I stared at it for hours. (Then I wedged it into an XT case with a half-toasted drive controller, a 486 processor, a Hercules monochrome adaptor, and christened it "Crackhead"...but that's another story..)
Then I got my new board, a SOYO 5EMA+, with only 2 ISA slots. My heart shattered, and I suffered a nervous breakdown.
I suppose that's how I got here.
I'm Outcat, and I'm addicted to Legacy devices...
Angry IT woman in big clompy boots. And talking lint!.
My personal view is that the number one way to improve any piece of software is to make it smaller. Removing stuff you're not using is a good place to start.
Your comment about using the BIOS to boot Linux reminded me of sonething else: that 4 partition limit on hard drives should be retired as well. Staying with my theme of nice round binary numbers - 1, a 255 partition limit would be nice. BTW, I'm referring to "real" partitions, not an extended paritition with a linked-list of logical drives.
TedC
Check out the PCI modems and linux page.
I support a bunch of serial devices in my job, and some of them don't have USB versions. And we don't support running them through adapters. For example, I support some digital cameras. Some of them were serial only (Mac or PC). We get iMac (and G3) because they can't plug it in and it said "For Macintosh". Well, when it was released, the Macs still had serial ports, guys. Sorry you're buying an old camera. And we don't support running it through an adapter. And the floppy adapter doesn't work because... no floppy. Nope, doesn't work on anything other than a standard floppy drive. Whee!
Hell, I get calls on a PCMCIA only camera we have where people are confused as to why it won't work with their desktops... "How was I to know it wouldn't work? "On the box it should have said PCMCIA." "How am I supposed to know whether my computer has that?" - actual conversation I had with a customer. I explained to him that it's his job to know the capabilities and features of his own computer.
But expect a flood of calls from end users as a tech for either the OEM or the device, because "Where does it plug in?"
There's actually room in most MBRs for 16 partitions (possibly more, I can't remember), but thats starting to cramp the code space a little. and then all the partition tools would have to be updated (do you beleive MS would update fdisk and dos to support 16 partitions?). Hmm, autodetecting a 16 partition MBR wouldn't be to hard: grovel around in the code section looking for where it loades the register (cx IIRC) with the number of partitions to scan and you're off. Hmm MBR signature checking, yummy (not).
Bill - aka taniwha
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Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
It's worse, Compaq is calling their machine the "iPaq." Oy. Check out http://www.compaq.com/produ cts/internetdevices/index.html for details. I love the part about "Machines configured with Windows 2000 will ship when the operating system is available."
Jerm
Oh, you're not a real doctor, are you?
Yea it was the original Win98 and certain BIOSes I think
>Apple demands one dollar per firewire chip in royalties.
At least it's an honest, up-front charge. The "Intel tax" on USB2 is likely to be much higher, but hidden in things like increased motherboard/chipset prices. I'll gladly pay a buck for the difference between an IEEE standard and yet another Intel pseudo-standard, and I think most educated consumers would as well.
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