PCA Forums

Anyone know of a motherboard maker that makes a board without serial, parallel, or floppy input? I havent used a floppy in 2 years, converted my printer over to use USB a year ago, and havent used the serial port in i dont know how many years. Hell, if I need to use any of those, there's always USB. In fact, if I could find a board that didnt include any PS2 ports, I'd be happy as well, but I know that's not going to happen.

How about you guys? Any of you regularly use the legacy ports that have been with us for over 15 years now?

The abit MAX series does not have any serial or parallel ports but does PS/2 ports. They have a KT400 for Athlons and some chipset for P4s. Has like 6 USB ports, 2 firewire, and audio connections on the back.

Ah sweet deal, thanks Busby. Any one here used one?

believe me when i tell u
going non legacy isnt really a good thing

I cant see why not - anything legacy has an equivelant USB adapter, or is there a monkeywrench in the works I dont know about? hehe

Well for one I don't know how anyone can live with out a floppy!!

Yea, garbage now adays, but still some apps require a floppie. Something I just installed, maybe the network card, require I write a file to floppie to set up the other system. Might have been a net sharing program, I forget. But it was a pain since I had to install a floppie drive to do it! Sure, bout the only time in a year I needed it in that system. Also I can't get my boot and some reskew disks to write to cd, so like now what if I don't have the floppie drive?

Sometime it is needed, I bought something awhile back the drivers were still on floppy. Sue I could probaly maybe download them from the net, but why bother.

As for the other ports, who knows, maybe you will get a great deal on some old hardware that isn't USB enabled???

i havent had a floppy in any of my systems in two years... have a usb floppy for just in case, but havent even used it

Hey Billy, can you boot off the USB floppy? Im thinking of getting on.

As a side note, yesterday I went to install XP on this new PC, it wouldnt boot off the XP disk for some reason so I went to make the recovery disks. XP needs 6 1.4mb floppies. I had 5 1.4Mb and, get this, 15 720kb floppies!

Said screw it and installed Win2k, I liked it better anyway

no from my experience you cant boot off of a USB floppy. Thats what I have now. I dont know if maybe some boards support it or not but I know my shuttle ak32 doesnt. Havent ever seen anything boot off the USB floppy besides my laptop that it came with.

I read in MaxPC once that disabling serial and parallel ports in the BIOS will see a slight performance increase. I believe the perf increase only occurs on mobos that don't have ISA slots, tho'. Regardless, you free up IRQs, so that's a good thing...

But I definitely need my floppy drive. And I occassionally use my old Wacom 12x12, which is a serial interface.

Well, I found out yesterday floppy drives are basically hot-swappable - 2 PCs running, and I'd switch the floppy drive from one to the other. THink Ill just to see if that guy over in the trade thread still has those floppys at 2 for 8$

I think floppy drives were just about always hot swappable. Though I seldom hot swap anything, no reason to have mine on 24/7

Also I have ran acrossed a few systems with the floppie cable upside down, normally doesn't seem to hurt anything but the floppie led never goes off and the drive of course does not work
Flip cable over correctly and all is well again.

Found out the same thing with My Imega tape drive on floppy cable. Had a M/b go bad 3 days before waraunty went out. Took system to the store I bought the parts at and they installed new one. Tech couldn't get bios to stay set. Got an error after every reboot and had to set it again. So he laid the tower over on it's side and installed a new battery. That fixed the problem at the store. so he turn it off, set the tower upright, connected the cables and I bought it home.

Would not boot, Bios had reset again! Finnaly I figured out battery was loose in the socket, tightened it with a piece of tin foil, set bios, no problem. But no floppie drive! Drove me buggy for hours trying to figure out why. It worked before and at the shop!
Then I found he put the tape drive floppy cable on upside down!!! Didn't hurt anything luckily.

And they wonder why I don't let them install stuff or fix my systems!! But can't get a job there because they don't want to take time to train me???

Like what's to train? Which shelf has which parts?

ANyway floppies are a worthless expense, nearly useless, seldom used, but need one and you got to have it!!

floppys aren't needed and should be tossed



I havent needed one in years.....




and you can flash a BIOS from CD, and that was the only real need for a floppy for me ever.......





when ever I build a sys I always disable the serial & parallel prots, I will never use them and never have

I basically agree about floppies not being needed, most of the time. Also depends who you might want to deal with

If you buy something with the drivers on a floppie, then what you gonna do, download off the net?

I bought something not long ago with the drivers on floppie, so it can and does happen to some of us
At least one set of my Linksys lan cards came with all floppies, including the drivers for linux.
I think the other new set came with drivers on CD though.

My maxtor 80 gig retail boxed drive came with MAX BLAST software on floppie! That was this year!

Also I had a program that had to make a file on floppie to install on another system for settings, no matter what it would not write the file to anything except the floppie drive! Not across the lan, not onto CDRW. A: was the setting and that was that! I think that was an internet sharing program or something, been awhile, but not that long. Whatever it was I don't use it anymore, but when I did want to try it, it forced me to write onto flopie the config settings to set up the other system with thier install program.

Of course their are still just a few people who don't have a CDRW yet, so if you need a doc type file or a 800k picture for something from them, how you gonna get it? Not everyone is connected to the net also.
That's one use I forgot about that does happen to me rarely, but once in awhile. I make Pinback buttons and such. Sometimes I do get a picture on a floppie from someone that is still using a 486sx or such with win 3.1 and no burner! Not gonna loose a 500 button sale over a cheap $10 floppie drive

Although I now have 3 XP1700s (I like those) I do still have 2 old systems. The old stuff still does everything just as well now as it did when it was new! Sure it can't use the new software, but for people who use computers just for work, many have no use for todays POWER systems! Although all the hype is you have to have one.

I've got a really good point of sale program, does everything I want it to do and it runs on a DX4 100, database and word procceser, graphics editing program, for many people that's all they need.

I have several High priced top end graphics programs I never use, but I use an old program from the windows 3.1 days constanly! Sure it can't do animated gifs, but then again I can't use them on pinbacks or T-shirts either

So I geuss the thing is even though a floppie is an ancient hunk of junk, it's still nice to have the option.
If your actually using the system for business, you never know who you'll be dealing with or what they have. So junk or not, it's good to be compatable

Oh, right, I agree. I don't really want to get 100% away from floppies (well, I would, but I digress). But personally, I'd rather use a USB floppy drive, and for the most part all of those things you listed that came with floppies could use a usb floppy drive (with the exception of the MaxBlast tho).

I just think they look butt ugly too hehe.