PS/2, VGA, Serial Port, Parallel Port... why aren't these dead?

[curaga]

All of my displays are VGA. All of my keyboards are PS2. Only one mouse is usb. My printer is parallel, as is my scanner.

Can't you think of the slight possibility, that someone, maybe, somewhere, only buys the comp itself, and uses their existing, functional hardware?

I can't think of any reason to throw away anything that works, no matter if it's a 10 year old keyboard.

Those ports are industry standards. And not having them would lose more customers than they can lose by having them.

[Hephasteus]

My new motherboard has a header for a single serial port and since I threw out all my cables like that years ago I can't decide if I want to buy a board that includes 2 of them for 25 bucks or buy a cable that converts a usb port to serial and deal with possible driver hassles.
What I want to know is why systems feel the need to supply 12 or 16 usb ports. I have a strange impulse from time to time to try to crack every wireless router around me, plug in 16 usb wireless adapters and see what it would be like to have cable plus wifix16 internet. Just to see what the network monitor graph would look like.

[bridgman]

What I want to know is why systems feel the need to supply 12 or 16 usb ports. I have a strange impulse from time to time to try to crack every wireless router around me, plug in 16 usb wireless adapters and see what it would be like to have cable plus wifix16 internet. Just to see what the network monitor graph would look like.

I wonder about that too. I have friends at work with multiple USB bridges plugged into their PCs, each with 6-8 additional USB ports on the front. My PC has 4 USBs on the front and a couple more on the back and I have no idea what to do with them

[Kano]

Well if there would be different USB controllers for each you could combine em for RAID 0 But when you think of printers, scanner, webcam, mouse, keyboard, usb headset, and a few usb sticks then you need lots of em. Especially Linux has problems when you use USB hubs and some devices, which work only reliable when you use em without. So lots of ports is always good. Saidly the case connectors can cause trouble too - especially the extra cheap ones...

[jeffro-tull]

The only USB keyboard I own is one I bought a couple months ago. Only reason I bought it is because my Thinkpad T60 got a second monitor hooked up to it and became my main workstation. Its battery completely crapped out, I bought an Aspire One to tote around, and my old rig was an aging AthlonXP 2800+. It was the hardest $15 purchase I've ever made, since I literally have a stack of PS/2 keyboards that still function perfectly.

Honestly, I like the legacy ports. I picked up a VIA C7 board earlier this year to use as a headless NFS server. The BIOS is wonky and wants to see a keyboard plugged in or it won't boot. You think I wanted to BUY a new keyboard to hook into my headless server? Hell no! I grabbed one from the pile and called it good enough.

[ssam]

I'm using a recent Dell PC at home over dial-up and a serial port would really help with hooking up a Linux-friendly modem so I could stop having to run Vista at home. I'm playing with a LAN-attached modem but unfortunately the built-in modem can't hold a connection reliably over our crappy rural phone lines.

just use a usb to serial adapter. I have used a serial modem with a generic adapter and had no problems. I have also used one to interface to a VXM stepper motor controler.

[bridgman]

Interesting. I looked into USB modems but the driver support didn't seem to be there. Hadn't thought about USB-to-serial.