the perfect LEGACY-FREE motherboard

[johanh13]

If you study the block diagrams of the 975/ICHR7 and the x38/ICHR9 you will notice a few important details, relevant to legacy-free systems. The ICHR7 supports PCI slots, up to 6 of them, but they all share 133MB/second bandwidth. Also, the gigabit LAN connection uses a PCIe connection! However, there are 6 PCIe lanes on the ICHR7, they each have 500MB/second bandwidth. Anyhow, with ICHR7, you could still have one x4 (with x16 mechanical) port and one x1 port and the last used by the LAN. Of course there are 16 lanes on the 975 northbridge, and they can be divided into two x16 ports. When both ports are used, they drop to x8 electrical. The ideal solution here would be three x16 ports, and one x1 port. The x16 ports would be one x16 and one x4, or two x8 and one x4, electrically.
With the ICHR9 southbridge, there are also 6 lanes, however, the LAN port does not use one of the lanes. So here you could have one x4 and two x1 slots. The x38 northbridge has 32 lanes, which can be divided between two x16 slots.
This would make the best possible solution out of either chipset, in my opinion. Clean, simple, and high performance. What more could I ask for???

 

[zpe]

Peter, there's nothing wrong with PCI. The only way I see PCI-E cutting down on motherboard size would be if the PCI slot is not replaced with another PCI-E slot. I too would like to get rid of it, but I don't see it happening for quiet awhile. I'm just glad that the number of PCI slots on new mobos is very low.

Originally posted by: jonmcc33
You don't seem to understand how much corporate needs overwhelm the power user needs. The company I work for uses bar code scanners that use PS/2 connectors. Some of our depots and distribution centers also have serial or USB scanners but the cost to replace all of the fully functional PS/2 scanners would be crazy. Those things run $400 each.

So you're willing to get new computers at these distribution centers, but you don't want to replace the bar code scanners? Why not just stick with the older computers? Eventually, you're going to have to move to USB ones whether you like it or not. Very soon in fact.

 

[Peter]

PCIE 1x as a replacement for PCI does save a lot of board space, not only because the connector is physically much smaller. The second reason is you don't have to route a parallel bus across half the board either.

This is also the main point why the "just leave the legacy stuff off the unchanged board" is missing the whole point in doing a legacy-free machine. By getting rid of the old stuff, you gain room for more of the current stuff, both on the board and on the I/O panel.

 

[Heidfirst]

Originally posted by: zpe

Originally posted by: Heidfirst
Oftentimes you can get into the BIOS of a mobo with a PS/2 kb when you can't with an USB one.

I hope these are old motherboards.

Nope, even current ones.

Originally posted by: Heidfirst
though I have absolutely no intentions of giving up my PS/2 keyboard

It seems that there's a market for older, sturdier keyboards. Maybe you should try prodding Microsoft, Logitech, etc. to make one that you like.

You attributed this to me but I didn't say it.
However, due to my experience about getting into the BIOS I am likely to have 1 around at least as a backup.

 

[Zoomer]

There is no benefit to going USB for keyboards. I very much doubt that anyone can overwhelm PS/2's capabilities. Incidentally, I thought the market for PS/2 keyboards are much larger than USB ones. You just have to look at the sub $10 market, not the $100 keyboard at bestbuy that has funky "Internet" buttons and what not.

About the 2 designs suggestion: That entails creating two seperate product lines. That means 2 seperate production lines, 2 seperate support teams, 2 seperate validation teams, and yes, 2 seperate dev teams. Does the cost increase make sense? After all, all these connectors and ASICs probably cost them a couple of cents.

About USB->Serial/Parallel bridges: There can be compatibility issues there. Besides, why introduce another point of failure, another part to keep in stock in case some break, increased support costs, etc when it would be much easier to just get a motherboard that does have PS/2 on it? The board would probably cost the same.

Optical drives: Why bother changing it? I barely use the optical drive these days; perhaps once a month or so. Less, I think. Going from $25->$40 for a SATA model, which delivers no benefit and might even cause compatibility issues. Does this decision make sense?
Floppy I can understand, but that plastic connector, metal pins, and the traces aren't going to be cost prohibitive either. I probably haven't used a floppy for more than a decade.

EFI: I hope that doesn't happen. While it's not too bad of a system, technically speaking, I can just see them pressured into adding ridiculous extensions for DRM. DRM was behind the frankly ridiculous notion of (In)Secure Audio Path, and the general idea that drivers should be run in user mode crap that Vista implemented. Frankly, if the DRM-free music movement pans out, it would all be for nothing. Busywork.

 

[piasabird]

There are probably a lot of I/O devices like TV PVR cards that are still PCI. This is just an example. Another example might be Sound Cards or RAID controller cards. Many PCI slots are probably useless next to a video card which may take up 2-3 slots.

I think there are readily available devices to convert USB to Serial or Parallel devices.

Intel sells some motherboards with no Floppy connectors and some people had to update the BIOS and had quite a bit of trouble including having to go get a USB Floppy drive which seems kind of rediculous.

 

[Peter]

Zoomer: There is no more price delta between SATA and IDE ODDs. Zero. Niente. Same for HDDs.

EFI is nothing to do with DRM. "Trusted" platforms can be done with legacy BIOS just as well, and both can be done non-"trusted" just as well.

Like it or not, if you want to keep using your old peripherals, you either use an adapter interface or stay with your old computer as well. That's how it's always been, and that's how it will be.

pisabird: Particularly TV cards benefit from the move to PCIE 1x. No bandwidth contention, and actually twice as much actually available bandwidth. Full dual-channel cards for digital OTA and/or satellite are available. RAID controllers are bottlenecked on 32-bit PCI. Sound cards are either redundant anyway, or if it's about "high end" cards, just google for 'X-Fi snap crackle pop' to get an idea about how close to the edge of useless the PCI bus is for these.

Arguing that PCI is 'good enough' is just like arguing a Model-T ford is 'good enough' for today's town traffic, just because it's got the top speed to roll along in a traffic jam. PCIE is the far superior technology in all areas from board design to actual use, and it's catching on quickly.

 

[johanh13]

Hello QuicksilverX1,

Have you seen the MSI X38 Platinum board? It has four x16 slots, two x1 slots, and a lone PCI slot. That is six PCIe slots my friend! Granted, the two yellow ones are not x16 electrical, but you get the point...
By the way, I just received my Intel DX38BT board today. However, I am still waiting on the RAM... The board is beautiful and looks to be very high quality...

Originally posted by: QuiksilverX1
5 PCIe slots, all version 2.0, the top two with a blank next to them

Not going to happen, maybe at most 3 or 4. with 2x 16, and x4, and x1.

Your not going to find a motherboard without PCI slots either.

 

[Quiksilver]

Originally posted by: johanh13
Hello QuicksilverX1,

Have you seen the MSI X38 Platinum board? It has four x16 slots, two x1 slots, and a lone PCI slot. That is six PCIe slots my friend! Granted, the two yellow ones are not x16 electrical, but you get the point...
By the way, I just received my Intel DX38BT board today. However, I am still waiting on the RAM... The board is beautiful and looks to be very high quality...

Originally posted by: QuiksilverX1
5 PCIe slots, all version 2.0, the top two with a blank next to them

Not going to happen, maybe at most 3 or 4. with 2x 16, and x4, and x1.

Your not going to find a motherboard without PCI slots either.

....

(all would have x16 mechanical interface, 3 with x4 or x1 electrical)

 

[Zoomer]

Like it or not, if you want to keep using your old peripherals, you either use an adapter interface or stay with your old computer as well. That's how it's always been, and that's how it will be.

Not if you have a few hundred enterprise customers who want PS/2 and each of them orders like a few hundred thousand units.

There is a reason PS/2 stuck around. These OEMs don't want to spend an extra 0.1¢ on USB keyboards.

 

[Peter]

... and rather spend 100 times as much for the super-IO controller chip (which contains the keyboard/mouse controller)? I don't think so.

The biggest OEMs are already removing PS/2 ports from their large volume business machines. For home/multimedia machines, the incentive is that an USB keyboard can contain other functions while a PS/2 cannot - audio controls and further ports through an integrated hub are the most obvious and most handy applications for this.

 

[Steve]

Originally posted by: kmmatney
They need to make more PCIe devices. WInTV is just now coming out with a PCI Express tuner. Hopefully if more manufacturers start converting everything from PCI to PCIe, then this can happen. I still find the PS2 keyboard port useful - I bet that will be the last thing to go.


Abit released a PS2-free motherboard back in 2002.

http://www.hothardware.com/hh_...ps/abitmax/abitmax.pdf

I don't think it sold well...

"With MAX: hearing your opponents around corners in Counter-Strike or
cranking the latest Britney Spears album are all possible in 6 channel
digital audio!"

LOL, that's 2002 all right.

Sometime around then, give or take a year, Syntax (IIRC) released a micro-ATX board based on SiS 741. It had no parallel ports, no serial port, and six USB ports instead. I guess it didn't sell all that well either, it's hard to find any info on it now.

 

[johanh13]

Actually, with the right keyboard, there is!

My favorite keyboard ever was the Microsoft Natural Ergo with the USB hub built in... Why did they quit making that board? All they needed to do is make a black version and I would be good to go. Now I use the 4000, which is ok, but could be better, if it had a USB hub built in...

Originally posted by: Zoomer
There is no benefit to going USB for keyboards. I very much doubt that anyone can overwhelm PS/2's capabilities. Incidentally, I thought the market for PS/2 keyboards are much larger than USB ones. You just have to look at the sub $10 market, not the $100 keyboard at bestbuy that has funky "Internet" buttons and what not.

About the 2 designs suggestion: That entails creating two seperate product lines. That means 2 seperate production lines, 2 seperate support teams, 2 seperate validation teams, and yes, 2 seperate dev teams. Does the cost increase make sense? After all, all these connectors and ASICs probably cost them a couple of cents.

About USB->Serial/Parallel bridges: There can be compatibility issues there. Besides, why introduce another point of failure, another part to keep in stock in case some break, increased support costs, etc when it would be much easier to just get a motherboard that does have PS/2 on it? The board would probably cost the same.

Optical drives: Why bother changing it? I barely use the optical drive these days; perhaps once a month or so. Less, I think. Going from $25->$40 for a SATA model, which delivers no benefit and might even cause compatibility issues. Does this decision make sense?
Floppy I can understand, but that plastic connector, metal pins, and the traces aren't going to be cost prohibitive either. I probably haven't used a floppy for more than a decade.

EFI: I hope that doesn't happen. While it's not too bad of a system, technically speaking, I can just see them pressured into adding ridiculous extensions for DRM. DRM was behind the frankly ridiculous notion of (In)Secure Audio Path, and the general idea that drivers should be run in user mode crap that Vista implemented. Frankly, if the DRM-free music movement pans out, it would all be for nothing. Busywork.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: johanh13
Hello,
The Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 already has five PCIe (although not all version 2.0, or all x16)
I would be satisfied if they just removed the two PCI slots, and put a blank next to the x16 slots (for double-slot graphics cards)

Why put a blank, when you can put a usable PCI slot in-between instead. Do you have something against PCI slots? They don't slow the system down any.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: id24601
Legacy does have its uses. If you were to build a legacy free system (SATA only) based on ICH9 then you would not be able to use many popular boot CDs. Hirens (and anything else that uses gcdrom.sys as its SATA CD/DVD driver) would fail to work because ICH9 is not supported by gcdrom.sys

That's interesting... and disappointing. I'm building two systems based on P35/ICH9R chipsets, but I still plan to use PATA DVD-RW drives in them. Hopefully I can boot off of them.

 

[seemingly random]

The all or nothing attitude of many is at work once again. I don't think the op was arguing that all 'legacy' capabilities be removed from _all_ mb's. Most mb manufacturers have several versions based on each chipset. One version could be legacy-less.

I think a realistic legacy-less mb would have no support for ps/2, ide or floppy. The lack of ide or floppy connectors would free up some mb real estate. As long as serial and parallel connectors are removed from the rear io block, I don't see a problem with offering headers for slot connector add-ons. mb manufacturers would have to make these readily available instead of just promising. I also question how much 1394 is used - which is sometimes optional.

 

[johanh13]

I have built approximately 50 computers in the last two years (for friends/family/work). Not a single one uses any legacy connections. They all have SATA hard drives and CD/DVD drives and USB keyboards and mice. I have not used a floppy for about ten years. However, I did rip two movies via 1394 firewire last week, from my Sony camcorder. With Vista it is totally painless...
Apparently I am in the minority though, or else manufacturers would be cutting it loose...

Originally posted by: seemingly random
The all or nothing attitude of many is at work once again. I don't think the op was arguing that all 'legacy' capabilities be removed from _all_ mb's. Most mb manufacturers have several versions based on each chipset. One version could be legacy-less.

I think a realistic legacy-less mb would have no support for ps/2, ide or floppy. The lack of ide or floppy connectors would free up some mb real estate. As long as serial and parallel connectors are removed from the rear io block, I don't see a problem with offering headers for slot connector add-ons. mb manufacturers would have to make these readily available instead of just promising. I also question how much 1394 is used - which is sometimes optional.

 

[Mudvillager]

Yeah come on, how hard can it be to make ONE legacy free motherboard?

Also I think CMOS reset button on the backplate should be standard.