Since modern motherboards don't have serial / parallel ports, it seems like something like this would still let people get their feet wet with basic electronics

Since modern motherboards don't have serial / parallel ports, it seems like something like this would still let people get their feet wet with basic electronics hacking. A simple example that we did back in my day was to build our own TI-LINK cables for the parallel port with $5 in Radio Shack parts rather than the $40 for the cable. When I saw this I also started thinking of connecting it to a relay for lighting applications. It'd be fun at a party to connect this to a set of relays and lamps and drive it from the output of a beat detection algorithm. Or to have it automatically dim the lights in the living room when the PVR computer starts a movie.