From what you've written, it seems to me like you don't need much of a
machine and certainly should be nowhere near the $1,000 you
are talking about.
I just bought an Emachines T3114 from CompUSA today for $200 after
rebates that has an AMD Sempron 3100 cpu, an MSI MS-7142 motherboard,
a dual layer DVD writer, 80GB HD, and also comes with some cheasy speakers.
It has only 256MB of ram, which you would probably want to bump up. and
it has an AGP slot if you want to buy a card, but you could decide first
if it was
good enough for you before hand. You would also have to add a floppy if
you really want one, but it has the connector inside and also has
2 pci slots available (the 3rd is for a modem, which I didn't test and
probably won't work with Linux, or at least not without some trouble).
That's probably all you need to be happy from what I can see.
I booted up Puppy linux on it and after changing the soundcard module,
X, ethernet, and sound all worked fine.
scott
Paul M Foster wrote:
> I'd like to replace my main box. It's one of those Walmart Microtel
> boxes that came with Linux installed. Here's what's happening: For a
> lot of reasons, I'm moving a lot of my applications from console to X,
> particularly using Firefox to run many of them. The problem is that on
> this box (256M memory Via C3 with 64K cache), I'm getting a lot of
> swapping and latency going on. So I'd like to get a box with more
> horsepower.
>
> Here's what I'm interested in:
>
> 1. Single-processor
>
> 2. 32 bit (*not* 64 bit)
>
> 3. 1GHz+ processor speed (decent on-chip cache, not 64k like this Via
> C3 chip I'm running)
>
> 4. 512M memory or more
>
> 5. CD/DVD drive
>
> 6. hard drive optional-- I'll stick an existing one in
>
> 7. AGP Video card (NO proprietary drivers). I'm not going to be
> playing a lot of video games, but I'd like a nice responsive card.
> Doesn't have to be 3D, but might be nice.
>
> 8. Linux-supported sound card
>
> 9. Floppy drive (occasionally needed)
>
> 10. NIC (optional-- I can find one to stick in)
>
> 11. I'd like to spend in the vicinity of $1000 (or less ;-)
>
> I don't understand anything about the difference between DRAM, SRAM,
> EDO RAM and such, nor do I understand "front side busses" etc. So I
> don't really know how to integrate components, though I have no
> problem installing hardware and putting things together.
>
> I'm not fond of big name (Dell, HP) boxes, and am more in favor of
> white box PCs.
>
> Generally, CPUs, memory, hard drives, floppies, NICs and hard drives
> are supported by Linux out of the box. I have three concerns, in
> decending order of importance:
>
> 1. Video card support vs performance. You can buy really smoking
> Nvidia and Matrox cards, but I don't want to use proprietary drivers.
> Most cards will work in your AGP slot, but whether Linux supports them
> without proprietary drivers is another matter.
>
> 2. System performance. I've heard nightmares about not having the
> timing on your bus, memory, etc. in sync. If components aren't matched
> properly, you can get lags and latency. I don't want to have this. I'd
> like to make sure that everything fits and works together properly,
> but I'm just not qualified to spec a system like this.
>
> 3. Sound card support. I don't care that much about sound, but sound
> support has traditionally been a problem for Linux.
>
> Okay, so long story short. What I'd like are the following:
>
> 1. Names of vendors who build systems like the above which will have
> Linux support.
>
> or
>
> 2. Links to *current* *updated* Linux hardware recommendation sites.
>
> or
>
> 3. Specific hardware recommendations which adhere to the above.
>
>
> I'd appreciate any assistance you 250 plus list members could provide.
> Thanks.
>
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