Load up Doom 3 @ 2048X1536 (ooppps...forgot 19" LCD 😉 ), okay whatever your highest resolution is and watch the darkness. 😉

Last post, everything works more or less. I was able to bump the FX-55 up to 2.8GHz with the stock cooler, but higher levels require more involved cooling techniques. I finally got a USB midi interface (the Edirol UM-1X) to connect my CM-500 for maximum DOSBox goodness.

Unfortunately, I cannot claim the desired total freedom from legacy peripherals and interfaces. I still use a PS/2 keyboard, an decent Keytronic one now but someday I will get my CVS Avant Stellar Keyboard. I had to install a PCI parallel port card for my SNES DirectPad Pro interface. Someday I will get them to a proper USB interface (I may use Playstation 2 controllers instead for an analog interface.) Finally, I will need to hook up a regular floppy drive if I have to reinstall WIndows XP on a RAID 0 drive. I hope that Windows Longhorn will be able to recognize nVidia RAID properly without having to insert a floppy disk from a 34-pin drive.

There should be a native SATA option in your BIOS. Depends on the mobo tho and I'm not sure if yours supports the setting, if you do not have the option then it's easily remedied by including the controller drivers on your 2K/XP CD.

I still prefer keeping floppies around anyway but I do admit that if Windows supported USB/CD to load F6 drivers from or if most computers in the world supported USB booting then I'd switch to USB in a heartbeat.

The Windows XP install program will not recognize RAID 0 drives correctly. Even when properly set up with the nVidia on-chip utility, Windows XP will still report as having two drives and you will have to choose which drive you will install Windows XP on. Then you will get errors.

Increasingly we wil see motherboards with USB devices that allow you to boot the machine. In fact, fingerprint scanners won't allow the system to boot unless the proper fingerprint is identified. They are often USB devices.

I await the day when all legacy ports will be no more. No more PATA, PS/2, Serial, Parallel, Gameport, or Floppy ports. Even PCI ports should be replaced by PCI-E. The only ports a system should have should be Ethernet, Audio, Firewire and USB 2.0+ ports, SATA or Ultra Wide SCSI 320+. (I don't include fan headers and such.)

Floppies are still around because of the need for cheap rewritable media. They could probably be replaced by flash cards. As with everyone else these days, though, I really only use floppies for boot disks (mostly for BIOS flashing) and copying small files to non-networked computers.

I don't think Firewire ports need to come standard on modern PCs if leaving them out would noticably reduce costs. I actually don't know anyone who has ever used one, and I know a lot of people with computers.

I love firewire (ALOT faster than USB for backups). Especially with my external drives......but my next external drives will be SATA...so no need for firewire anymore. 🙁

Looking at Longhorn it's highly likely that just has Windows 98 (95b didn't really do much) helped usher in USB tech, it's likely that the introduction of Longhorn is when USB will finally kill the floppy. (heh...another floppy is dead announcment!!!)

What about USB flash drives? They can be used with a huge number of computers and store far more than a floppy drive. I don't believe that you can boot off them though, so you can use CD-Rs for booting purposes. The real downside is that they are far more expensive than either.

I use a firewire connected HD at work. Cool device. Mind you the USB2 device of similar size/spec isn't any better/worse so there's no difference really!

I have upgraded my system with the following:

Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music
Creative Gigaworks S750
2x 512MB OCZ Platinum EL Rev. 2 Dual Channel PC3200 DDR RAM (now 2GB of RAM)
Thermaltake XP-90 Copper Heatsink + Vantec Stealth 92mm Fan
Razer ExactMat Mouse Pad + Wrist Rest

The only leftover from the old system is Keytronic keyboard, which is too low end a part to accompany such a system for long.

My Klipsch 4.1 Promedias are for sale if anybody wants them. Just drop me a private line.