> tachyon_1@email.com wrote:
> > As for PAR/SER dissappearing, I highly doubt it. It might be going 
> > away on the kind of crap I won't buy anyway (ie DELL, 
> eMachines, etc.
> > consumer desktops) but there's no way in heck they'll get rid of it 
> > anytime soon. There's just way too much demand from 
> business customers 
> > with legacy connectivity needs. Especially in industrial, 
> > manufacturing, and production companies. In fact a friend of mine 
> > makes a nice living selling add on PCI PAR/SER boards to 
> make up the 
> > demand for customers who require them.
> 
> The second part of this paragraph seems to contradict the 
> first part. If people make a nice living selling 
> parallel/serial add-on boards, that's probably at least 
> partly because these ports are going away in the normal 
> computer systems.
> 
> When there's only 10% of customers left that wants/needs 
> them, you're starting to find more and more motherboards 
> (including good ones) that don't have them anymore. And more 
> and more of the people who need them will use add-ons (PCI, 
> USB). Which makes sense to me, even though that makes these 
> ports more expensive.
> 
> Gerhard


Industrial users buy a lot of those.  Still lots of ISA backpanes in the
world.

In the real world, serial is almost dead (the occasional 56k modem), and I'm
surprised that parallel has hung on for so long.  Must be a lot of old
printers out there.

A Dell laptop I had recently had both a serial & a parallel port, but no
PS2.  I thought that was odd.  Had to buy a USB/PS2 converter.  Since
laptops have USB, NIC & modems ports, what are people plugging into them?

I still use serial & parallel for CNC & control stuff.  I've got lots of
cards!

Tony

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