I/O plates piss me off

[Mercutio]

My rant for the day:

I just got in a nice, new Gigabyte K8VM800M. With no I/O plate in the box.
Called zipzoomfly, who said they'd only do anything for me by email. EMAILED zipzoomfly, got back "It's not our problem."
Now I've emailed Gigabyte, and called Gigabyte's north american office, and I'm not expecting anything from them, either.

Why the bloody hell can't we get back to having the same I/O plate for everything????


Thank you. That is all.

 

[Bozo]

I feel your pain
I just went through the same thing with an Intel board. What I did was claim the board was defective and returned it for replacement. The new board was fine.
It was a lot easier than trying to get just the I/O shield.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[i]

It took me ages to find an "Aurora" type I/O shield. I hate the inconsistency too.

 

[ddrueding]

The new boards I buy are Gigabyte nForce4 boards that have 6 audio plugs, 2 ethernet connectors, and 2 SPDIF connections. How are you going to fit that in a standard? I'm still hoping that someday soon the average board will ditch parallel, serial, and PS/2 connections. That would require another standard.

The better question might be: why isn't the IO shield integrated with the connections? I can't think it would be that hard to enginner a way where the shield would slide into place as the board is installed.

 

[Mercutio]

Serial, Parallel and PS/2 need to stay at least until I don't have to drop into DOS to do a BIOS upgrade.
On the other hand, what percentave of users hook up 6 speakers or use digital audio outputs?

 

[ddrueding]

Serial, Parallel and PS/2 need to stay at least until I don't have to drop into DOS to do a BIOS upgrade.
On the other hand, what percentave of users hook up 6 speakers or use digital audio outputs?

The problem with standards is that they have to be standard. That means being able to accomodate at least 90% of the boards out there. There's just too many "special needs" now that so many things are integrated onto the motherboard. Many of the funkier things are now using PCI slots and motherboard headers, but I hate those things as they clutter the case.

 

[P5-133XL]

I feel your pain. It's a pain i've felt before and one I undoubtly will again and I know of no good solution other than buying motherboards only from retailers that have a retail level warrentee or from distributators that have blanket "don't care why" return policies because motherboard support is non-existant from any of the manufacturers.

It really sucks.... We had a good retailer in NewEgg but since they went to manufacturer warrentee's for motherboards and other items, life hasn't been so fine. I really don't like having to read the fine print on return policies whenever buying stuff.

Now we need everyone to go to their windows and yell

"I'm mad as Hell and I'm not going to take it anymore".

This is an easy one so no bonus points for the source of the quote.

 

[Mercutio]

There's a company called "Chiefvalue.com" that appears to be a screen-scrape of newegg. It DOES NOT have any boilerplate about not warranting motherboards. I'm not sure how legitimate it is, but it has newegg's prices and shipping, and doesn't have a retarded "we don't want your bad motherboards" policy.

I really don't understand why we moved away from the PC99 I/O plate. It had a spot for network and for USB. Standard things, in other words.

 

[i]

The better question might be: why isn't the IO shield integrated with the connections? I can't think it would be that hard to enginner a way where the shield would slide into place as the board is installed.

I think that is an excellent idea. A factory pre-installed I/O shield, spot-welded to the connectors or riveted to the motherboard would solve the problem completely. At least the size of the opening for the I/O shield is standard, right?

 

[Tannin]

Bring back Baby AT!

 

[Buck]

Bring back Baby AT!

Except for those lousy PS/2 connectors that required a special backplane adapter and a motherboard header. Not to mention cramming all the other serial connectors and the parallel connector into a space that was designed for children's hands.

 

[Tannin]

The PS/2 connectors were OK. It was not getting a PS/2 connector that used to really bug me. Plus the way they had 17,689 different ways of wiring the pin-out. Grrrr!

I kind of like the cramped and awkward Baby AT jobs that still come in now and again — it lets me show off my hard-earned skills in front of the junior staff members, who think a Thunderbird 1333 is the sort of thing you dig up out of an Egyptian tomb.

"Tony, can you have a look at this one? I've been trying to get this rotten cable to plug in for ten minutes and it just doesn't fit."

(Click, reack, wriggle the fingers just so.)

"There you go, no problem. Can I have another rest now?"

 

[Tea]

Ha! What he really means is:

"Tony, can you have a look at this one? I've been trying to get this rotten cable to plug in for ten minutes and it just doesn't fit."

(Click, reack, wriggle the fingers just so.)

"AGGGH! Bloody crappy old thing! Can somebody get me a bandage please?"

 

[Buck]

For some reason, images of the movie Any Which Way But Loose come to mind -- Tony swearing at misfit motherboards, and Tea out back giving the old heap of electronics a toss through the air. A good 100 feet from the back porch there must be a pile of old computer stuff (mostly Compaq/HP boxes) that Tea has accumulated from trying out her different discus-throwing maneuvers.

 

[Fushigi]

"Left turn, Clyde."

 

[Tea]

 

[time]

:rofl: