PATA Feedback

[XmikeX]

Some of us wish to still use our old stuff from yesteryear... and still be able to enjoy "modernity" on the same mobo...

I enthusiastically bought the Blackops (and I have two of them) as opposed to another "high-end" x48 mobo because BO provided __TWO__ PS/2 ports .. floppy.. _PATA_ .. and A SERIAL COM PORT HEADER. Damn thing would have been perfect if there had been an LPT header (oldsk00l parallel port) on it

PS/2 ports - I have a _REALLY_ _REALLY_ nice KVM setup.. that was a massive $$$ investment back in the day..and with TWO PS/2 ports I can continue to enjoy this KVM awesomeness and amortize the cost of my investment over time. (PS/2 <-> USB adapters will not work well here.)

FLOPPY? No need to explain this one... floppy is sometimes necessary with certain OS

Serial COM and parallel LPT stuff .. ok ..that's more of a personal thing.. I interface with pathetically ancient hardware for archival purposes and this is the way to go. Having these ports on a separate PCI card or via USB adapter is sometimes a big big FAIL .. in-place motherboard solutions seem to work better.

PATA? Who wants to update some outstanding classic drives? My Plextor 52/24/52 is still the best CD burner/duplicator I've got..bit for bit. I've also got an archival necessity here from time to time.. in the form of ancient hdd's or ZIP100/IDE/PATA evilness that pops up unexpectedly.

Legacy compliance still sells, people. If you can add this to your feature-set at little or no extra cost, why not? Assrock's been selling plenty of those hybrid AGP/PCIe/DDR1 & 2 qcore-capable conroe mobos.. ....... and these have centronics/parallel/LPT ports, which I happen to need.. I bought two of these mobos, in case one breaks.

XmX

EDIT - Just got a call from a friend.. He wonders what he's going to do when he can no longer interface properly with the SERIAL RS232 (COM) port on his UPS.