[NTLUG:Discuss] (somewhat OT) AMD mobo/chipset recommendations?

[Darin W. Smith]

Thanks to all of you for the excellent recommendations.  I'm just about 
decided on the following combination:

Gigabyte GA7VAXP-A Ultra with an Athlon XP 2800+ ($321 from 
unitedmicro.com...might be able to find it for less elsewhere, as I've seen 
the board alone for $122)

1GB RAM

(2) Seagate ST3120026AS 120GB serial-ATA hard-drives in a RAID-1 
(mirroring) configuration

My existing dual-head GeForce 4 video board

Probably will throw in my existing CD-RW and DVD-ROM, and maybe a still- 
good 40GB UDMA100 drive I have (probably to hold the system itself...I'll 
use the mirrored drives for my data).

I'll actually probably use the on-board sound, and send the SBLive with my 
old mobo+proc to make another box, which I might use as a (ugh!) Windoze 
station to do measurement and design for the 3-way speakers I'm designing-- 
since most of the good speaker design s/w requires a M$ OS.  Though I am 
also tempted to just fill it with the cheapest storage I can find and throw 
it in the closet as a server like I discussed months ago (web-server, lots 
of storage, miscellaneous stuff like a local caching DNS server, maybe an 
LDAP server, NTP, qmail, etc.)

For the Windoze apps, I could always use my laptop, or install Win4Lin (5.0 
just got a great review) on my new revamped desktop box.

I'm thinking of trying out Gentoo on this new setup.  I've heard great 
things about it.

Now I just have to decide on a case--the Lian Li aquarium case is kinda 
cool, but I keep my box hidden under the desk anyway--so I may just opt for 
the quietest case I can find that would still keep everything on ice...

D!

On Thu, 19 Jun 2003 10:30:31 -0500, Greg Edwards <greg at nas-inet.com> wrote:

> Paul Drew wrote:
>> Howdy,
>> Here are the Dragon's on the Soyo site, and it does say it has raid.
>>
>
> I may have to withdraw my reservations about the ASUS A7N8X that I made 
> earlier.  Yesterday I was thinking about all of the things that I've 
> tried in the process of getting this board working.
>
> Several issues seem to change depending on the USB devices connected. 
> Well this case has 2 USB ports on the front of the case that I had 
> connected to the board.  Last night I disconnected them and reinstalled 
> Mandrake 9.1.  I've already found 1 issue that has disappeared.  I was 
> having a problem where it would lock up during the boot sequence anytime 
> that I powered down.  The next boot (after a reset) would be fine but 
> would need to do an fsck and cleanup the mess.  That problem seems to be 
> gone.
>
> So far no other system crashes, but it's only been about 10 hours. There 
> is no doubt about this boards performance, it simply cooks.  Even 
> StarOffice starts in a reasonable amount of time ;)  I'm interested to 
> see what the APIC features bring down the line when the Linux kernel 
> catches up.
>



-- 
D!
Darin W. Smith
AIM: JediGrover
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite 
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." --Mark 
Twain "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"