While looking across the latest stack of nVidia nForce 500 series motherboards that support AMD’s AM2, I was surprised to see all of them featuring PS/2 ports. Isn’t this about time this twenty year old port got deprecated in favour of USB?
Most of the motherboards only have four USB ports. If two are taken up by the keyboard and mouse, then that only leaves two others. I currently use eight USB ports in total, and as my Dell only has five on the back I need a four port hub, which is messy and unnecessary. I see no reason why the extra USB ports couldn’t be provided. It’s certainly not space, there’s plenty of room left on the back, and it’s definatly possible at very little cost, so why don’t we have it? I’d like to see is a move forwards towards providing ten USB ports as standard.
All this Link Boost, King of Ping, Dual Net and Media Shield crap isn’t what I want. I just a USB controller that provides ten ports out of the box! Not much to ask for is it?
6 Comments
I agree… my current mobo has two USB ports… I also have a four port hub. So my mouse and keyboard are plugged in via USB -> PS/2 socket changers.
The thing is, while hubs can be bought - particularly PCI ones - mobo manufacturers are bound to sell us short. The BASTARDS!
I just don’t see what the motherboard/chipset makers have to gain from third parties selling extras. Even Dell used to have six ports as standard a couple years back, and now its down to five!
Why do we need to get rid of them? They work. I use a nice fancy keyboard with loads of hot keys and an MS IntelliMouse Explorer 4.0 (corded of course) and they are both more than happy to play on PS/2.
I agree that motherboards could start to have a few more USB ports, although I don’t see what’s wrong with having a few on headers. Of the 8 mine supports they are all plugged in, just 4 of them via headers.
Actually, thinking about it, there are still some motherboards that do funny things when trying the BIOS with a USB keyboards (quite why some manufactures can’t get it right still I don’t not even want to try and comprehend) and even XP has its funny moments with USB mice.
Just because it’s old does not mean it should go. I still use serial com ports, and how long has the ATX standard been around now….
One of the big problems in the IT industry is that as the industry moves forward, its becomes very reluctant to remove legacy technology. Yes they still work, but wouldn’t you rather have two more USB ports rather than PS/2 ports that can only take in one type of device?
Headers always seemed like a hacked way of doing things. Theres plenty of room on the back plate, why not just include it there?
I agree, ATX has been around for too long. But no-one except the biggest manufacturers are prepared to risk moving onto the newer BTX standard, even though it’s technically better.
What do you use serial ports for now? I can’t think of one thing I would use it (not that I have one!)
My phone uses serial to connect up for synchronisation (it’s a Siemens ME45).
There is only plenty of room on the backplate is you remove legacy ports like serial, midi (not quite legacy) and parallel. Myself I don’t see why USB is the current saviour, the CPU utilisation is huge, especially compared to Firewire and it’s still very slow really. Take Flash memory, that’s more than capable of out pacing the meagre 40Mb/s that USB2 manages. I would rather see a move away from serial connections to parallel technologies, why send it all through one pipe when you can have two?
USB is established. I’d be very angry if everyone started moving away from one technology to another, and it’s also cheap. The best technically doesn’t always win (remember BetaMax vs. VHS, any superior audio format vs. MP3), but it’s a combination of price, simplicity and industry support.
Firewire isn’t a direct competitor to USB, as they aren’t equal. But last time I checked not many devices support Firewire now (5G iPods dropped FW support) and I can only see them being used for video streaming now.