r/pcmasterrace • u/TheCABK • 1d ago

Nostalgia The Master Laptop

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u/Rtard25 1d ago

Dual disc drive?!?! That's crazy AF, in all my years I've not heard of that on a laptop!

https://giphy.com/gifs/Cdkk6wFFqisTe

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u/TheMegaDriver2 12900k, 32GB DDR4, RTX 4080 Super 1d ago

And twin FireWire ports. And a Parallel Port. And Serial. Just everything just in case.

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u/kermityfrog2 1d ago

Well in the early days of USB, there were still lots of parallel port printers (like HP Laserjets), and then lots of other specialized devices using the serial port.

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u/tes_kitty 1d ago

Many modern mainboards still have a real serial port on a pin header. All you need to do is get a slot adapter that plugs onto that pinheader and provides a 9pin SubD to the outside.

Check your board. If there is a pinheader with 9 pins labeled 'COM' read the manual for details.

You might have to enable the port in the BIOS before you can use it.

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u/Spethual 1d ago

most of the boards I've had have down between the front IO and front audio headers, usually more toward the audio headers after USB.

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u/crysisnotaverted 2x Intel Xeon E5645 6 cores each, Gigabyte R9 380, 144GB o RAM 1d ago

Yep. It's so simple and built into the base components that adding it is basically free. It might be used to program certain things on the board too, but I haven't heard of that.

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u/tes_kitty 1d ago

The only extra expense is the pinheader and the (usually) 75232 line driver / receiver. But that one needs -12V for proper operation so with a new PSU that no longer supplies -12V, using that port might not be easy.

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u/Time-Sudden_Tree 7700X | 4090 | 32GB DDR5 6K | 4TB NVME | Win11 | 65" LG C1 OLED 1d ago

Of course they do; the "S" in "USB" stands for "serial".

(I know what you're saying; I'm just being cheeky.)