> I've been pondering the serial/parallel/IDE/FDC problem for a while now.
> I had come to the conclusion that if the other SMC part was used, then
> a separate 16550 part would almost certainly be needed. This would not
> be so bad though, since we would then have two "low performance" serial
> ports (one for mouse, one for dot-matrix printer perhaps?), and two "high
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
What is giving everyone the illusion that we've got SERIAL dot-matrix
printers? I haven't SEEN any serial printers short of lasers, except
for expensive high-speed far-from-the-host band printers. Unless we
want to spend $60+ on a serial-to-parallel adapter (ah, the days of
Commodore 64!!!), most of us with printers will be getting an ISA card
with a parallel, and presumably 2 slow (or fast) serial ports anyway.
I, for one, will need a parallel port; whether it's on the motherboard, or
whether it's the multi-io card I've already got, I don't care, but it
needs to be factored into either the chips on the board or the number of ISA
slots...
> The ability to use 2.88 Mb floppy drives is interesting but only as a
> future capability (presently too little availability of drives and media).
Until the floppies come down to less than $50-60 per box...
1Mbps capacity would be useful for QIC-117 floppy port tape drives, but
not much else I don't think...
Keith
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