Oh Where Oh Where Have The AGP Slots Gone...?

I've been bumping my head on this since AGP first appeared and PCI cards began to disappear. Just when I was getting used to AGP, they changed the voltage on later generations of AGP slots so you had to watch out for that. Then just when I was all happy in the AGP world along came PCI-e. Ow! Help! I gave up using upgradeability as a criterion for mainboards a long time ago, about the only components that survive a mobo upgrade are hard drives and CD/DVD drives.

All this progress is making me feel tired :)

Mainboards themselves were never very upgradeable thanks to CPU socket layout changes on each generation of CPU. But yeah, I feel your pain.

> All this progress is making me feel tired :)

I'm concerned that by the time I afford myself new hardware, it won't have IDE, and even the CD/DVD drives and HDs will not be transferable.

So far I've completely skipped both AGP and PCI-e, although the video in this laptop and the "onboard" video in one server are both defined as connected to the system by AGP protocols even though neither of them has an actual AGP port to plug a card into.

>> I'm concerned that by the time I afford myself new hardware, it won't have IDE, and even the CD/DVD drives and HDs will not be transferable.

What is this I-D-E of which you speak?

@NoDough The most recent Linux box I built has an IDE interface in it (Shuttle xPC case), but I'm not using it. The DVDRW drive I bought for it came with a SATA interface as did the 1TB hard drive. I expect that the IDE connector will soon go the way of the FDD connector -- this mobo doesn't have one. Doesn't bother me much though, the last machine I built with an FDD installed in it was like 2004.

Quoting:I expect that the IDE connector will soon go the way of the FDD connector

One can envisage a sort of "evolution" in all this, as it were, for removable storage on motherboards. - the tape-loading drive evolving into the larger-size floppy drives - the 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drive plus the original "I-D-E" hard drive - the first EIDE standard (a.k.a., P-ATA2 w/o UDMA) for two hard drives or 1 x hd plus 1 x CD drive - the P-ATA3+ hd standard (with heightened usage of 7200rpm speeds, LBA, int13, DMA, PIO, high-speed CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, ... etc) along with the arrival of USB 1.x - the disappearance of the floppy drive, the appearance of USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394/firewire, the appearance of SATA - the current trend of using internal solid-state (flash) drives and eliminating CD read-only drives; replacing the latter with DVD drives having various R/W options.

So it certainly IS conceivable that the prevalent use of SATA drives, internal solid-state drives and USB-attachable drives will make the IDE connector absolutely obsolete.

Future "evolutionary" trends?

I'm waiting for UniBus! Where everything in your machine uses the same bus and same SATA-style single connector for power and data! All power is directly fed through the mobo to the ports! (except for the occasional high-powered external device that needs its own dedicated power adapter). Video cards, expansion cards, external devices. No more USB! No more Firewire! No more SATA->eSATA adapter cables! No more hunting for that hard to find usb or firewire cable with just the right end types! No more wondering if your PSU has enough power leads on it! No more wondering if you have the right type of PCI/PCIe/PCI-x slot!

Just UniBus!

20 internal ports! 20 external ports! All power is directly fed through the mobo to the ports! (except for the occasional high-powered external device that needs its own dedicated power adapter).



(Ok, I doubt something like this will happen anytime in the near future, but I can dream....)

@techiem2 I'm showing my age here... but I had to chuckle when I saw "UniBus"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unibus

LOL. Figures someone had already created something called that. :P

While not providing the same level of power, isn't this just what USB is supposed to be?

USB-3 is certainly fast enough to drive HDs...