Do you remember having to tune your radio next to your ZX80 computer, with 1k or ram, just to hear some squeaks and pops that you called computer music. Do your remember playing music on your Commodore 1541 5.25" floppy drive. How about squinting to see your green or orange computer screen.

Well all good things must come to an end. Recently many common components on a PC have been removed. Most people purchasing a notebook will find that there is no longer a 1.44 floppy drive, parallel port and serial port. This trend has now moved to the desktop. Many motherboards no longer have floppy controllers, parallel ports and serial ports. Instead you are given 10 or more USB serial ports. In fact some manufactures have removed the IDE hard drive, IDE optical channel. Yes the old ribbon cable is going to be history. It does make sense to simplify components. Now your peripherals are USB and your internal components are mostly SATA.

So what do you do with your parallel laser printer? You can purchase USB to parallel cables. There are also parallel and serial PCI and PCIe add on cards.

If you have that pile of 1.44 floppies and you wonder how you will ever get the data off of them if needed. You can purchase external USB 1.44 floppy drives. Finally, you have an IDE hard drive full of data and you thought you could just put the drive into your new system but now you can't. There are two options. You can purchase a IDE to SATA adaptor and still connect your hard drive internally. This device is a small circuit board that converts the IDE single to SATA. The other option is to put your old IDE hard drive or optical drive in an external USB enclosure. This not only solves the problem but allows you to move the drive to any computer with a USB port.

So what's next to go? My bet is on the optical device. Do you remember paying $8 for a blank CD? With 8GB flash drives selling for under $30 1gb for about $10, it is only a matter of time before flash memory is the cost of a blank optical disk and much easier to use.

About the Author
Evan Freedman is an author for The Computer Geek Custom Web Page Design and for CSSZafco.com, distributor of computers and accessories. Evan has been diagnosing and fixing computer for over 25 years. Please visit the site to view a huge assortment of Computer Technology.