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And lo on Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:42:11 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> did
spake, saying:
>>> Well... have you opened the bonnet of your car recently? I notice
>>> newer cars have a big sheet of plastic under there, but beyond that
>>> it's still pretty much a case of "if you don't know what a distributor
>>> is, you probably shouldn't touch this - otherwise you might die". At
>>> least computers don't physically kill you if you make a mistake. ;-)
>> Except vehicle manufacturers don't want their customers fiddling under
>> the hood, computer hardware manufacturers should at least video
>> game/processor/etc retailers should.
>
> Mmm, true...
>
>> Well last time we had this thread I mentioned the motherboard
>> daughterboard setup combined with a hot-swap facility. Simple slots on
>> the back, press the button and the daughterboard disengages and you
>> pull it out and slot the new one in place.
>
> We have some 10 year old Dell PCs that do exactly this. Press a button
> and the case falls apart. (I think it's meant to unclip, but actually it
> just falls apart.) Press another button and the daughterboard with all
> the PCI stuff on it unclips and slides out of the case. (Don't ever try
> to put it back though...)
And how much easier is that to work with, or to put it another way how
much more comforting to a newbie do you think that would be?
>> Have a dedicated slot for the CPU, one for the memory, and one for the
>> video card, with the rest being generic PCI-type slots. Similar generic
>> front slots (with a dedicated boot slot) for extra hard drives, floppy
>> drives, CD, DVD, tape, etc.
>
> Well now, if you buy a big expensive server, they actually come with
> hot-swappable drive bays. Take an empty draw out. Put the HD inside it.
> Slot it into the front of the case. Done.
>
> A computer case like that should only set you back... oh, I don't know,
> a few thousand pounds.
>
> Actually, try this:
>
> http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/
>
>
>> Think how it stands at the moment someone has a computer with one DVD
>> player and a floppy drive, he's never used the floppy drive in his life
>> and wants to replace it with another DVD rewriter or Blu-ray player.
>> What's he got to do to make that happen?
>
> The problem with all of this is that somebody has to design a set of
> nice slots that everybody will manufacture to. (Otherwise you won't be
> able to buy parts from other suppliers and slot them into your machine!)
You mean like PCI and SATA and 3.5" drive bays :-) The problems that
others pointed out was the obvious limitation that these slots and
connections would be fixed; you'd be stuck at the equivalent of AGP or
ISA. Except when you buy a mother board you're already stuck at these
limits.
There should be nothing stopping you from popping the components, sliding
the side of the case open like a drawer, pulling the old motherboard,
sliding in the new one closing it up (I'm thinking combs from hive type
ease, minus the bees) and then clocking the components back in assuming
backwards compatability like USB or slotting in new ones.
> If you buy something like a HP BladeCenter you can slot more CPUs, RAM,
> HDs, etc. into and out of it without even powering it off. But you can
>
> So, in summary, the technology exists, it's just wickedly expensive
> right now. Because the only people who "need it" are the
> high-availability guys who want to hot-swap mission-critical components
> in some big datacenter somewhere. I guess if the industry decides that
> normal people might "want" this kind of thing they *might* get their act
> together... but don't hold your breath.
It's wickedly expensive because they're wrapping it up in servers and high
quality checks and the manufacturers think that the only people who need
it are people who can afford servers with high-quality checks.
Remember - they charge what they think you'll pay.
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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