Tuesday, September 1 2009, 02:35 am
Slackers 'n Motherboards
Go to an online computer hardware retailer and click over to their motherboard section. What will you find? IDE ports and, what's this? Floppy ports? Yes, you will in fact find a 3.5" floppy controller on a brand new Intel Core i5 motherboard made in the year 2009. The news gets worse when you find this on a micro ATX motherboard. Yes, a motherboard you would be putting into a case that has no room for a floppy. Were the electrical engineers trying to be funny?
This brings us to the almighty point of the blog post. It seems motherboard manufactures are continuously living in the past for no reason. There is no need for a floppy port, coaxial audio out, PS/2 ports, PCI slots or even firewire now. Yet you will still find any and sometimes even all of those outdated technologies on boards put out within the past few weeks. Let's not forget that all of this stuff is powered by BIOS technology dating back to the very first 286 PCs. That's over 15 years that the BIOS has not changed! For frakks sake let's get up to date with some EFI BIOS motherboards! A Google search will reveal MSI's feeble attempt at releasing one EFI motherboard that seemingly never made it into the hands of a real consumer.
ASUS, DFI, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, and XFX please listen good. Here's what should be on a motherboard made in the year 2009: Eight USB ports, two powered eSATA ports, optical out, dual Intel or Broadcom LAN (not Realtek), 1-3 16x PCI-E, 1-4 4x/8x PCI-E. EFI BIOS. That means no IDE controllers, no PCI slots, no PS/2 ports, and no floppy controllers. Oh, and lower power consumption while you're at it. I'm sure you'll find lots of nice savings by removing that legacy hardware.
This brings us to the almighty point of the blog post. It seems motherboard manufactures are continuously living in the past for no reason. There is no need for a floppy port, coaxial audio out, PS/2 ports, PCI slots or even firewire now. Yet you will still find any and sometimes even all of those outdated technologies on boards put out within the past few weeks. Let's not forget that all of this stuff is powered by BIOS technology dating back to the very first 286 PCs. That's over 15 years that the BIOS has not changed! For frakks sake let's get up to date with some EFI BIOS motherboards! A Google search will reveal MSI's feeble attempt at releasing one EFI motherboard that seemingly never made it into the hands of a real consumer.
ASUS, DFI, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, and XFX please listen good. Here's what should be on a motherboard made in the year 2009: Eight USB ports, two powered eSATA ports, optical out, dual Intel or Broadcom LAN (not Realtek), 1-3 16x PCI-E, 1-4 4x/8x PCI-E. EFI BIOS. That means no IDE controllers, no PCI slots, no PS/2 ports, and no floppy controllers. Oh, and lower power consumption while you're at it. I'm sure you'll find lots of nice savings by removing that legacy hardware.