Re: re xylist and dual booting with Xp and either 98se or dos for xywrite.

[J R FOX jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

--- Avrom Fischer  wrote:

>   Equally important is your warning about ports.
> I just blithely assumed that all computers have
> parallel, vga 15 pin, ps2 and serial and usb ports
> came on the pc not realizing that usb did not exist
> in the dos world and that the ps2 keyboard and mouse
> ports are passe. 

Manufacturers (and not just of computers) seem keen to
eliminate prior features they now deem to be
unnecessary -- presumably because it saves them money.
 The incentive to support "legacy" features is very
limited.

> Is the problem curable with the
> equivalent of an io card with a parallel port, a pc2
> port and mouse port.

Well, that's another problem. So many of the
motherboards being sold now and for the last few years
have their own built-in THIS and built-in THAT.
Result: fewer expansion slots (and types of expansion
slot) than were routinely provided in the past. This
has proved to be a major consideration and delay in
the selection of my next main board. For example, I
have a couple of very good, last-generation AGP video
cards, with 256M of video memory onboard. They should
be more than adequate for my needs. I'm no gamer, and
would prefer to use one of those, vs. having to buy a
new PCI-E type, or use some onboard video chip.

In many cases, I don't want *their* chosen built-ins,
either; I want to use components of my own choosing --
which are known to have good drivers for my preferred,
non-Win OS -- and that requires more slots. But this
puts me out of the mainstream, very much swimming
against the tide.


 Jordan