[NCLUG] suggestions on building a box
Michael Dwyer
mdwyer at sixthdimension.com
Thu Jan 11 09:33:57 MST 2001
At 09:14 AM 1/11/01 -0700, you wrote:
>I'm thinking about replacing my linux box with one built from
>components and was wondering if I'm getting myself into trouble or
>not. Anyone have good or bad experience, or recommendations?
The general rule is that if you use good components, you can't go
wrong. In fact, I believe that building Linux boxes from parts is better
than trying to change someone else's box into a Linux box -- less strange
hardware on board.
>I'm looking at an Abit kt7 motherboard (athlon chip). From what I can
>find, Abit used to make mediocre boards but now the quality is much
>better. They also have a kt7-raid board that has a built in raid
>controller. Is this worth it?
It is a VIA chipset board (abit-usa.com). I'm not fond of VIA's, personally.
The raid controller is IDE raid and is only Level 0, 1, and 0+1 (Mirroring
and Stripe-ing). Check the linux docs to make sure it is supported
well. As of Nov 2000, the Linux hardware database reports very little
Linux support for it. You will probably need a specialized boot kernel.
They report no problems with the non-raid version.
>I found someone (jcns.com) that will burn in a bare bones system that
>I configure. That would alleviate a lot of my concerns with buying a
>system piece by piece.
I do my own burn-in, using a specialized software package called
"setiathome". It seems to work pretty well.
Final words, I again think this is the best way to go. But step
carefully. There are a lot more on-motherboard features than there
were. For example, many motherboards are coming with Intel video built
in... but installing on these machines was difficult. Some built-in sound
chips are difficult to support, too. If you can, get a look at the board
yourself, and identify the actual chipsets, then go back home and check how
each are supported.
Google is your friend: http://www.google.com/search?q=linux+abit+kt7
More information about the NCLUG
mailing list