Actually, the primary reason why I got the giabyte board instead of the
Asus board is that it has the serial port on the rear panel. The Asus
P5B has a serial port, but no connector for it. There is a header on
the motherboard for the port, but not only does Asus not include the
DB-9 on the rear I/O shield, they don't even give you an expansion
bracket for it.
If it was up to me, I'd buy a motherboard that still has:
-Parallel port (more about that below)
-TWO serial ports (both with connectors on the back)
-TWO IDE ports (4 devices)
-Floppy controller that supports TWO floppy drives
WTF.....
And frankly, I'm pissed that so far NO ONE makes a board with that
feature set.
As to the parallel port, if the P5W-DH doesn't have a parallel port, it
is the only board that I've seen that doesn't have one. So far, all of
the Conroe (C2D) boards that I've looked at do still have the port
(note, it's possible to have the port without having the connector in
the I/O shield area ... that's what Asus did on the P5B, they have a
motherboard header instead .... but then they need to give you the
bracket to mount a connector in an unused expansion slot.
I still have a lot of devices that use serial ports. Serial ports are
not dead. In fact, a brand new, current model JVC 1080P HDTV set has an
RS-232 serial port for control / communication with a media center PC.
Other devices that use serial ports include GPS receivers, modems, some
scanners, some printers, some UPS', lots of high-end Ethernet-backbone
class routers and other network equipment, and I have a few other
devices, not terribly common I agree but the point is .... RS-232 has
been around for 40 years, and there are still a huge number of devices
floating around that use RS-232, and it's even still being used in some
new designs (e.g. the JVC HDTV). Anyway, Asus, if you are listening,
your decision not to put the DB-9 serial port connector on the P5B cost
you selection for my systems. I'm using Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3's (and
it's as good a motherboard as the Asus P5B).
In my view, all of the manufacturers are moving too quickly to do away
with legacy stuff that some of us still need (in fact, I still need two
floppy drives, a 3.5" and a 5.25" [ok, one of my hobbies is "antique"
computers .... in fact, I'd like to have a way to connect an EIGHT-INCH
floppy drive to my PC ... I know that's very unusual, but look at the
list above, there are still a lot of relatively common devices that do
use serial ports].
Barry:
Thanks for the info. I'm aware of the difference of the E6400 and E6600,
and why I would prefer to go with the E6600. Glad to here that the price
might drop around Christmas time - hope so.
I'm not happy with the mobo selection offered at present. The P5WDH is over
priced as far as I am concerned and would be a better value below $200
compared to other boards. (Wishful thinking). It bugs me that it has no
parallel port, though I know that this port is almost a dinosaur now days.
I'll take a closer look at those boards you suggested and see if either of
them will do the job for me. Question: Why does this board have a serial
port? What perpetual uses serial i/o now days. (UPS?) The last time I had
something that used a serial port was a Hazeltine 1420 terminal. (Those of
you who know what that is have been around a while.)
90 days is forever, I bet things will look much better for Christmas.
William
