Something XP will have trouble winning over users with

[DarkAngel 0]

I am a avid beta tester... and there is one major problem with XP. Drivers. If you don't own a new card, then you are screwed over. I own a Aureal Vortex 2 2500 SuperQuad, and am yet to find drivers for it (Win2K) that are not Beta WDM. The problem is that Aureal was bought by Creative (the bastards) and now I don't have any resources. If anyone else has this problem then please reply and help me out.

[jdulmage 0]

uhm..

 

if you were a beta tester, you'd know that they are currently working on getting Aureal cards (among other hardware devices) working properly. They get the drivers from whomever is making them (MS does not make their own sound card drivers that often)

 

You'll have to wait until that support is out then.

[EddiE314 0]

Well, if your card wasn't mfd in the last year or two and Creative is doing the driver support then you're screwed man, wait....Creative Labs and Driver Support??!? Sounds like an oxymoron to me.

[Hit 0]

As an Aureal (Turtle Beach Montego II) user, I can say that I know where you are coming from. Aureal is dead, and Creative Labs is sending out a collective "screw you" the customers of the company they bought out.

 

Having said that, amazingly, both Win2K and Whistler manage to install a WDM that works decently on this machine. It might start to pop every now and then, but I guess that's better than not working at all.

 

What surprises me is that my ISA NIC is still not supported by XP, despite its being NE2000 compatible. I'm guessing that will certainly be fixed by Beta 2.

[jdulmage 0]

among DOS, among Aureal, and again, among ISA, they are all DEAD. How do you expect an ISA NIC to work? your nuts if your still using anything ISA

[Down8 0]

Hey, sometimes it can't be avoided.

 

Why spend another $40-150 on something you already own?

 

I'm using a 33.6 ISA 3Com WinModem. No, not b/c I like it, but b/c I unexpectedly went from broadband [on my PCI Linksys] to living in the middle of nowhere, being forced to use dial-up. No money/desire to go buy a new modem just to avoid old technology.

 

I always try to get at least one ISA slot on my motherboards, just in case. As long as mobo manufacturers keep building mobos with ISA slots [Abit KT7A/RAID], the standard will not be "dead".

 

-bZj

[Hit 0]

It's not that I don't have the money to get a PCI NIC, hell, they're cheap enough. It's that there are no PCI slots left. Period. Win2k supported the card just fine, and I am sure XP will too.

 

And no, "get a new computer/motherboard/etc" is not the answer I want to hear. Nor will it be to many users MS is trying to convince people to upgrade. My computer is well winthin spec of what XP's requirements are, despite being almost 2 years old. I spent $2300 on this machine (w/o monitor) and I'll be damned if I'm gonna get another $2000 machine cause MS doesn't feel like supporting ISA.

[DarkAngel 0]

Hmmm, jdulmage, I never saw that info. Plus, no one is making Aureal Drivers. I have tried old NT4 drivers that are worth **** for XP. Oh well, looks like I'll have to wait for that fix from MS.

[Vampyr 0]

Lets see, i can occupy a PCI slot with a NIC card or i can use a ISA NIC card and fill that now vacant PCI slot with something useful, like a Guilemont 8 input multitrack audio card or a nice Adaptec 160 SCSI card. ISA is good for low end devices (nic cards, modems...)

[Deider 0]

I have a Creative Labs Modem Blaster 56k which is isa, and it works flawlessly in XP. Just my 2 cents worth.

[MSGuy 0]

ISA is trash plain and simple. ISA in its day 10 years ago was pretty good. But now we have PCI and AGP, fully PnP. ISA is slow, not plug and play, legacy, and all around a pain in the butt. I don't see why people are still hanging on to their crap hardware. Just because I have an ISA NIC doesn't mean I have to or should use it.

 

And to the person that said that as long as they keep making ISA slots it is not dead. The PC 2001 specification says that to be fully compliant a motherboard can have NO ISA slots. In the PC 99 specification it just recommended that there be no ISA.

 

P.S.

I have an ISA SCSI card if anyone is interested.

[Malkosha 0]

The point here is that if its "dead" or not, many users still have ISA boards they want to use. If your going to make an OS then leaving a segment of the population out because it dosn't fit into your (MS's) sense of standards, then it will limit sales and bring some harsh comments. BTW, my sound card is ISA; soundblaster 16, and I like it because:

1) I don't give a crap about "super" sound and

2) Its compatable with everything.

 

XP dosn't find and install it but I can install it using the WDM drivers after setup. If your NIC is NE2000 compatable then a generic driver should work.

[SHS 0]

Look boys & girls ISA is far from being dead.

Floppy

Com Port

Prt Port

PS/2 Port

Joystick Port

Midi Port

all of them are base on the ISA spec and most im one of all bios hehe.

Well ever get rid of legacy no by a long shot maybe in 5 to 10 more yrs.

[jdulmage 0]

well....i'm saying, if the ISA device runs, great job, if it doesn't, dun complain, it was your choice to use crap ISA to begin with

[MSGuy 0]

It is not only MS that is involved in coming up with the PC 2001 spec. There are several other vendors that are a part of it. So it is not like MS is just trying to force their view as the right one, although they do have a powerful voice. All of those devices that you named are legacy and can be substituted with other standards.

 

Just because MS doesn't put the driver on their CD does not mean that it wont work. It just means that they are not going to officially support the device because it makes it a nightmare for their Support Staff. If you can get it to work great but if not don't cry to Microsoft that your 10 year old hardware doesn't install. And just because it is on their CD doesn't mean they wrote the driver. Microsoft does NOT write device drivers, except for their own hardware. They may certify a driver but they don't write them.

[jdulmage 0]

what you say? someone with brains, MSGuy, I salute you for the stating the obvious points that no one else realizes, MS DOES NOT WRITE THEIR OWN DEVICE DRIVERS

 

nuff said

[INFERNO2000 0]

MSGUY: "ISA is trash plain and simple. ISA in its day 10 years ago was pretty good. But now we have PCI and AGP, fully PnP. ISA is slow, not plug and play, legacy, and all around a pain in the butt. I don't see why people are still hanging on to their crap hardware. Just because I have an ISA NIC doesn't mean I have to or should use it."

 

Just wanted to comment on that...I had an ISA ATI 2000 10mb NIC that was fully plug and play, from Linux to Win9x(hell, even 95 and NT had native drivers for it).

it worked great in 2000, and in XP(it was known as Whistler beta 1 back then) for the short time it was on that system.

 

/begin uninformed/uneducated rant

If you have an ISA card from way back when...and it works, then fine, use it.

 

It's buying a *new* ISA card that isn't the best of ideas..unless you're on an old computer.

 

As for abandoning Legacy-I look forward to it

 

I honestly don't use the COM ports or Parallel ports, joystick ports or things like that

 

hell, my floppy drive just blinks when I power on and off....it doesn't get used.

 

We could all abandon legacy right now and not be too bad off. MAC did it...they're all USB and firewire now..they gave up their old ports and floppy(which is now an optional external device, I think).

 

We here could all do it without too much of a problem, because it would allow some parts of our systems to be sped up(without the slower ISA buses to go through). That's a selling point on many motherboards without ISA.

 

The problem is, not everyone is exactly intelligent about their computers.

 

They don't all realize the good that can come from upgrading and abandoning legacy devices.

 

When USB and IEEE1394 products come out in mass and are cheaper than their legacy counterparts; and companies abandon parallel, COM, PS2, etc. for USB(with hubs), we might start seeing TRUE abandonment of legacy.

 

But don't count on it.

 

What we need is a new evolution of computers for this to happen...something that will rip people away from old computers that don't at least have USB.

 

That's how apple did it--they released the imac. It got rid of most if not all the legacy parts natively. Now they were accessed through USB.

 

If you wanted to, in the same area you have for your ATX connectors, if you were to abandon COM ports and Parallel ports...you could have 4-6 more USB ports.

 

add in the fact you can have hubs on these, and you have a lot of room for expansion.

 

Couple this with the fact that many USB appliances come with USB hubs in them already...and you can see where this is going.

 

But as long as people clutch their Packard Bells and hope for the best...they're impeding those of us that want to press on to bigger faster better things.

 

 

/end uninformed/uneducated rant

 

[This message has been edited by INFERNO2000 (edited 26 February 2001).]

[Hit 0]

The PC has always been about legacy, and it probably always will be. The serial and paralled port have been in there since 1981, and while they may finally be on their way out, they sure enjoyed a longer run than they likely should've.

 

Of course Apple could do what they did with the iMac. Their architecture is mostly closed: they decide what goes in their machines. A PC architecture is mostly open. Unless a standard has been developed (and one finally was), you'll see legacy crap like COM ports, etc.

 

If you want it done right, you might as well throw some more stuff out. Sure, ISA is dead (I wouldn't use it if I had more PCI slots, but since I dont...), but PCI is showing its age too. It won't be long before we will be arguing PCI needs to die too. The PC's greatest asset is also its greatest weakness. It's open architecture means in order for it to truly change, all the major PC manufacturers have to do it.

 

There are other examples of things that simply need to go. But dealing with legacy will probably always be part of life as a PC user... At least it's cheaper than proprietary hardware...

[SHS 0]

Good point INFERNO2000 but you forgot that even MAC has Bios know as Rom Bios & it still a legacy counterparts.

In order to get rid of legacy device they need to get rid of the southbridge chip first

that mean no board Ide,Usb,Bios,Com,Prt,Floppy,PS/2 or any that need the southbridge chip &

Sound Card should not have a Joystick/Midi port.

They need come with new kind bios for the system.

[SHS 0]

Better try a bit older then that Hit in better try the 1960, There is a new PCI come out know xPCI hehe http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT022601075334

[Hit 0]

Yeah, SHS, I was thinking more of the IBM PC architecture. At any rate, those ports are OLD. Thankfully, I've been upgrading my hardware so I use USB instead. My joystick and parallel ports are vacant.

 

Not my PS/2 KB port tho. This nice new MS Natural KB Pro keyboard I got still uses it...it also uses a USB port, but that's for the two USB ports that are on the KB itself...go figure.

[Vampyr 0]

Remove ISA and you remove MIDI controll. Well, if you do that then i'm pretty sure the very small amount of musicians that use PC's for audio recording would, without hesitation, switch to MAC.

[Four and Twenty 0]

yo hit I have the natural Pro Key board as well and I don't plug in the ps2 only the usb. The ps2 is there for backward compatibility but you do not have to use it if your sys supports usb keyboards

 

[This message has been edited by Four and Twenty (edited 26 February 2001).]

[INFERNO2000 0]

I bought the same keyboard as a DELL OEM.

 

It LACKED a PS2 port. Only had the USB connection.

 

I'm now not using ANY external legacy ports..just USB.

 

now as for VGA, RJ45 etc...

[EddiE314 0]

i have my floppy unhooked right now, told the bios there was no floppy enable "report no floppy win95", no problems, but i'll have to hook it back up to install win2k again when i need to, i got an ABit VH6 and it won't boot from the cdrom. I tell it that i was it to boot the cdrom first, hdd0 second, it won't do it, it just goes right to the hard drive i'm running win2k pro sp1, plextor plexwriter as secondary slave and a pioneer dvd rom as the secondary master, can anyone help me with this?

 

[This message has been edited by EddiE314 (edited 27 February 2001).]