I am more than convinced that hardware manufacturers are deliberately obsoleting perfectly sound technologies merely to get customers to shell out their money.

You see, I have an old ASUS board with AMD Athlon XP processor which had some problems recently. I have two IDE hard disk drives of 80 GB each. Now because I couldn't find any half-competent techie to fix the issue (or even diagnose it) I was forced to buy a new Pentium board with a P4 processor.

Now I find that I am unable to use my IDE drives because it's a SATA board and there is only one IDE connector. I had to change my AGP card (Radeon 9600Pro) and buy a new PCI Express based card (NVidia). So once I changed a motherboard, it changes most of the devices except the trivial PCI devices like network card (which aren't costly anyway and most m/bs now come with onboard LAN controllers).

Why has IDE been outdated so quickly. The last motherboard I bought was less than a year ago and it supported my two hard drives. Now 2*80GB harddisks have been instantaneously obsoleted thanks to a change in the motherboard controller (S-ATA). And I am told that newer Intel boards don't come with two IDE ports.

The real problem now is that transferring all my data to a new hard disk will be a nightmare because I have multiple partitions of Linux, Windows and so on...

Have anybody experienced this kind of a situation. It makes me sick that the computer industry makes so much money by such unethical business practices. I don't change my TV or refridgerator or music system every year because the device technology has changed the way computer industry has been going about.

And I refuse to buy the "technology revolution" theory. In the last ten or fifteen years, I don't think there has been a radical revolution in the computer industry (say like changing from vaccuum tubes to transistors as in the 60s and 70s)... the base technology has remained pretty static.

Hi,

I am pretty sure that you can IDE > SATA converters quiet cheaply...

The sata standard has been around for a while, and during the transition there were (and still are) motherboards available that support both. (I bought one last week). You can also get Motherboards that still support AGP.

On another side note, yes, technology does move fast... I would much prefer to have to replace a motherboard every 3-5 years, then have the pace of development halve.

Also, there has been a HUGE change in speed over the last 20 years. All these small changes you are complaining about represent increases in speed... Individually they are only modest jumps, but add them up and you have an amazing leap.

A.

Well, anyway, I was a bit shocked that they have obsoleted so many things in such a short space of time. I don't know whether minor increments in speed need to obsolete existing technologies so quickly. What I'm upset about is that replacing a motherboard almost entirely wastes all the earlier hardware devices which work perfectly. It's a waste, both in economic terms as well as environmental terms and it's a nuisance to keep the drivers updated. Surely they could find a way to reuse existing technology... We waste too much money just keeping up with this...

I am still not convinced that we have had a revolution in the last ten years or so in the IT industry at the very basic level... I don't understand why these ports need to keep changing so often and rendering old computers obsolete..

Perhaps you didn't make your choice of motherboard/cpu set wisely enough, I have just visited the site I normally buy my hardware from and there are plenty of motherboards (for both AMD 64 and P4) with 2 IDE connectors

It should be quite possible to find a motherboard that supports your existing components (CPU, RAM, Drives, Video). And I'm a little confused about the IDE complaint. Is the loss of hard drives because of existing CD/DVD drives? Another solution is to get a PCI IDE card. Quite cheap and it would let you keep all your existing IDE devices.

I do agree with you Harishankar, I had almost the same experience that you a few weeks ago. I bougth a new computer and I realize that almost all the hardware of my older PC is obsolete. I had to buy a PCI Express graphic card, and SATA hard disks. My "old" Nvidia AGP MX440 graphic card works very well, and I don't believe entirely the idea that because they change the technology so the new graphic cards works with 16 bits rather than 8 bits is enough reason to change the standard. The same goes with the hard drives. It's in their interests to make old hardware as incompatible as possible so costumers are forced to renew it.

The choices at the local dealers are very limited. They mostly stock only the Intel based boards. AMD chipset boards and processors are quite rare nowadays as they're not very popular in India (understandably, considering their heat problems in general).

Anyway, most of the new Motherboards are S-ATA only. Getting an older Intel board with 2 IDE port support might be more difficult considering that the dealers wouldn't keep the stocks as they might not be as fast-moving as the newer ones...

Thanks for the suggestions though. At present I am considering buying a new processor for my old motherboard (probably a Sempron which is the only processor currently available for this board now in the market) and I am going to return the P4-based board for now...

I just forgot to mention that buying hardware online is not really an option for me since it's much more expensive and would take too long to be delivered where I live. The local dealers give good discounts most of the time and it's also more convenient...

Hi Hari,
Semprons are fine, they are the same as AthlonXP.
They are inexpensive as well.

If you get one it will be your last... these and the socket "A"
boards are getting scarce.

Yes. I just hope that it was not a motherboard problem and just a problem with the earlier processor.

Find out for sure before you buy.
I've always found processors to be the most reliable part of
a computer.

Thats why I think I am going to stop playing video games (not completely). Its too damn expensive to build a new system every 8 months to run the latest games.

It was a processor problem. Good news though. The new Sempron has fixed my problem and I've returned the P4 board and processor so no waste of money...

It was a processor problem. The Athlon XP was discoloured. Now with the Sempron I've got my system working as before normally!

I hate upgrading. Its expensive.

Companies try to rip people off. Look at semi's doing over 1 million miles with hardly any work on them. And the engines have to work to pull all that weight. They have engine brake which also puts strain on the engine.

Why can't they make cars that go 1,000,000 miles. Because they make money on cars that break.

That is such rubbish.
It is cost prohibitive to make cars last that long, besides what materials could withstand mechanically cycling over and over again for 100 years without wearing down and needing replaced. If they could make cars that last that long we would be paying 50 thousand dollars for a measly little honda civic. Yea they make money on parts but parts can only last so long.