[Hoary] Laser Printer

[Vincent Trouilliez]

> Besides, motherboards are beginning to lose both parallel and serial.
> But they're losing serial a lot faster. You may well find your next PC
> doesn't support it.

<rant mode = "on"></rant>

Yes. As an electronic guy, I find this trend very annoying !
Embedded devices mostly use the serial port to communicate, as most 8
bit micro-controllers come with one and it's just so convenient and
cheap. Without serial port on the PC it just makes lie more difficult
than it should be :-/  There are some USB/serial converters (like for
mice), but you can't really rely on them blindly, USB is just not
RS-232...
Same for serial ports, many electronic hobbyist could use it to
experiment/play with countless things, cheaply and easily.
Same for ISA slots. Simple ISA cards were not very difficult to design
and build/manufacture, you could design and make your own wild ideas
come true. But with PCI... :-/

So that's why I intend to keep my old Pentium 200MMX board forever, it's
got proper serial and parallel ports, 3 ISA slots, and no CPU fan so its
quiet to top it all.

I understand the need to move on, that the I/O panel on modern ATX board
is very crowdy, that connectors are expensive etc, so I am okay if they
remove all the serial and parrallel ports... if they at least provide an
internal connector, so that those who need these ports, and I guess
zillions of electronic techies will still need them for a few decades to
come, can use them...

<rant mode = "off"></rant>


--
Vince