Intel Bearlake boards kill PS/2 ports
 

Now, here's something of a disappointment. As a person who consistently promoted non-reliance on interrupt-poluted, CPU-hogging USB for basic user input devices, I was quite teed off by the 'backside surprise' on the boards.

While the keyboard PS/2 input was still there, no trace of the green mouse PS/2 jack - instead, two more USB ports.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39439

they also killed most other ports


YAAAAY, finally we're coming closer to my perfect vista motherboard

one that doesn't eat memory and allows fast disk to disk file copy ? ;)

bye bye KVM Switch :(

hello USB to 2*PS/2 convertor for €7; works excellent with KVM, tested and verified by JMke (c) ;)

there is still a PS2 port and a firewire to kill

Why on earth would they kill firewire when people still demand it Rutar? ;)

I was surprised to see the lack of the mouse PS/2 port, but honestly it is about time! Most mice are USB anyway. It is nice they had the foresight to add two USB ports instead, incase the user has a USB keyboard they wish to use as well.

Oh, and as Jmke said, my keyboard key based KVM switch works just fine with/without adapters on it. :)

Dell latest machines already come without PS/2 FYI ;)

1. It costs money to have the chip onboard (licence).

2. It clutters the motherboard and the drivers hence slowing things down.

3. Only FW800 has a speed advantage, E-SATA makes FW400 useless.


The actual number of people using firewire would be interesting. My guess it is A LOT lower than people that have it on their motherboard.

1. Intel chipsets don't offer firewire anyway, so no added cost there. ;) It is added from the individual board manufacturers, and then more often then not only on premium or higher-end range boards at that.

2. Firewire is still in fair demand from both hardware reviewers and end users.

3. There are other reasons for having it besides pure throughput, such as you won't find E-SATA on any home video/digital equipment. And then some devices that do or might use E-SATA offer IEEE1394b support on their devices already.


To stay in topic, anyone seen some detailed info regarding the hardware firewall support of the ICH9 southbridge on Bearlake? The chip is also reported to nix the LPT port as well. :)