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Hardware > Legacy free PCs and MBV2

#10910 - tepples - Fri Sep 19, 2003 9:41 pm

Anandtech is running an article on the new BTX PC form factor. Most BTX PC motherboards will be "legacy free", that is, they will drop PS/2, serial, and parallel ports. Will there be a way to use multiboot and PC/GBA communications on these machines, or will future GBA developers have to search for an older machine on eBay?

F2A cable - available in USB and parallel; can transfer .mb programs; unknown whether general PC/GBA communication (such as for debugging) is possible
MBV2 cable - available only in parallel; can transfer .mb programs; can debug

Has anybody figured out the F2A USB cable to the point of being able to use the PC as a terminal? Or is Jeff F working on a USB version of the MBV2 cable?
_________________
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#11047 - foobar - Wed Sep 24, 2003 5:12 pm

You could buy an parallel port interface as PCI card and put that into the btx board. to continue using the mbv2.

bye
-- foobar[/quote]

#11050 - torne - Wed Sep 24, 2003 5:58 pm

You can get a USB parallel port (plugs into USB and appears to the PC as a parallel port, takes normal printers..etc).

#11065 - tepples - Thu Sep 25, 2003 1:41 am

foobar wrote:
You could buy an parallel port interface as PCI card and put that into the btx board

One of the BTX form factors will drop PCI entirely in favor of PCI Express. Will PC hardware manufacturers sell affordable PCI Express parallel ports?

torne wrote:
You can get a USB parallel port (plugs into USB and appears to the PC as a parallel port, takes normal printers..etc).

The problem is that MBV2 and XBOO aren't a "normal printer" but rather something more sensitive to PC timing. Has anybody managed to get an MBV2 to work over a USB parallel port?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#11106 - Cyberman - Fri Sep 26, 2003 2:23 am

tepples wrote:
foobar wrote:
You could buy an parallel port interface as PCI card and put that into the btx board

One of the BTX form factors will drop PCI entirely in favor of PCI Express. Will PC hardware manufacturers sell affordable PCI Express parallel ports?

torne wrote:
You can get a USB parallel port (plugs into USB and appears to the PC as a parallel port, takes normal printers..etc).

The problem is that MBV2 and XBOO aren't a "normal printer" but rather something more sensitive to PC timing. Has anybody managed to get an MBV2 to work over a USB parallel port?


There has been a lot of controversy over PCI express, in fact some manufacturers of bus chip sets aren't supporting it. Dell has been the biggest (problem) with this insisting all there vendors support it. One of them told them to fly a kite and said they didn't base there idea on sound engineering. Now though that PCI express is a lot more mature and better thought out (IE the initial proposal was a serious mess). PCI express will take the same amount of time that PCI did to be fully adopted. 4 to 5 years. Erswhile PCI will be around for a bit, it's a pain switching buses and PCI has worked too well to dump so easily. ISA was easier to dump (grin).

Cyb
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