On 17 Feb 2004 at 22:56, howard schwartz wrote:
>In the same spirit of new hardware/software making old OS'es obsolete --
>will empty slots on motherboards (e.g., PCI or ISA) become a thing of the
>past? Here one might include, even memory `slots' and modular motherboard
>construction, in general.
>
>More and more, what used to be separate video cards, sound cards, dialup modems
>are built into the motherboard. If any of this does not work, one has single
>point failure and must replace the whole motherboard, not just one electronic
>`card'.
>
>Slots allow, to some extent one to use older circuit boards (in a sense
>older ram modules too) on newer computers. One can see why manufactures
>would will to make this hard or impossible - so you must buy new versions
>of old things whenever you buy a newer computer.
>
>I suppose, if PC makers had their way, we would need to throw away every
>hardware part of our older computers and just buy everthing all overagain,
>when when got a new computer -- make them all one piece. To some extent,
>makes have been like that for years, and their is that new trend to make
>monitors and pcs/macs all one unit, unstead of two pieces.
I think the answer to this will be, as with so many things, 'yes and
no'.
Consumer computers will, I believe, have fewer and fewer slots
available. Many "compact" designs only have one or two slots available,
even now. And they are continuing to be sold because of purchase
price: it's cheaper to build them that way, and that's what's most
important to most people who just want to use a computer.
On the other hand, there are motherboards & systems which you can buy
today, which have lots of slots - I've seen as many as 10 PCI
connectors on a single motherboard. They're just more expensive, and
are targeted towards the industrial/business markets.
In the middle, there are still plenty of motherboards at about the $100
mark which have four or five PCI slots on them... and I expect that to
stay that way for quiet a while to come. Also, various people in the
industry have stated that AGP is probably not long for this world, as
the next revisions of PCI arrive, allowing higher video bandwidths.
Anthony Albert
===========================================================
Anthony J. Albert [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Systems and Software Support Specialist Postmaster
Computer Services - University of Maine, Presque Isle
"This is only temporary, unless it works."
--- Red Green
