[NCLUG] suggestions on building a box

[Neil Doane]

* Matt Rosing (rosing at peakfive.com) on [01-11-01 09:28] did utter:
> 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?

Spend the extra time to make _sure_ that each component you get is supported
under the Linux kernel you want to run.  There are few things worse than
spending the bucks to put together a kick-ass system and then finding out
that although it runs, all sorts of the bells and whistles you bought 
aren't supported under Linux.  My suggestion is to come up with a specific
list of parts with manufacturers and model numbers and chipsets and pass 
that around to people (like people on this list, for instance) to get
reactions about Linux compatibility and, if recommended, modify your list 
accordingly.
 
> 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?
> 
> 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 couldn't find a "jcns.com" to see what they do, but either way, you could
probably eliminate this step and burn the box in yourself if you planned
ahead enough to know exactly what hardware is supported.  If you decide to 
do the burn-in yourself, you can find our test software, Cerberus, here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/va-ctcs/




Neil


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