Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 21:06:01 -0700 (PDT) From: Eaglez <eaglez69@yahoo.com> To: Craig Johnston <caj@lfn.org>, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: trailing edge system recs Message-ID: <20000517040601.1323.qmail@web112.yahoomail.com>
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As long as you feel no need (or overwhelming desire) to go dual, I'd go athalon. (a friend of mine is just now, going dual celeron 500...) Motherboard: I've heard nothing but excelent reviews of Epox's athalon board. I forget what the exact number is, but you should be able to find all the specs on their site (wherever that is...) It has UDMA/66 and PC133 dimm support. (those being the latest stable IDE and RAM versions/speeds, respectively.) Sound: The awe64 is supported. I have an SBLive, myself, which works flawlessly, although there have been reports of cracly sound for some people. You might want to look into a PCI128 too... Unfortunatly, my knowladge of sound is limited to Creative (i started out with an AWE32, just when it came out, and i've stayed in creative). Hard Drives: I'd DEFINATLY stay with SCSI if you can afford it. True, UDMA/66 IS faster than some scsi2 hd's and maybe some Ultras or wides (i'm not sure; i'm just getting into scsi myself) But it won't beat out the SCSI U2W or the Ultra160 drives. If you persist in your quest to regress to IDE, IBM IS a great company for IDE as well as SCSI. I don't know much about seagate, but i think they're pretty good, from what i heard. (my knowladge there is restricted to 540MB drives and below) CD ripping: I haven't gotten it working myself, in FreeBSD, but i happen to know that with most modern QUALITY IDE cdrom's, you can rip in cd-digital. This DVD drive i have certainly will. Just make sure you can get the cd-digital cable. (it's a two-pin connector to your sound card, just like the regular cd-audio cable) Anyway, welcome to the modern world :) Two years ago... lets see... that's what, first P2's? 266mhz? wow, that'll be a jump :) good luck! -Jesse --- Craig Johnston <caj@lfn.org> wrote: > > Ok, it has come time for that every-two-years > upgrade. > > I am quite out of touch with what is going on in PC > hardware at > the moment, and would appreciate some > recommendations. > > The system will be doing lots of FP intensive stuff > so I was > considering an Athlon at the sweet price point. > What is the > mobo rec for an Athlon? Is an Athlon on any mobo > actually > recommended at the moment? Otherwise I was > considering a > celeron. > > Sound. I want 1) flawless functionality and 2) the > best sound > quality I can get short of digital output. Is an > AWE64 > recommended? cs4237? Something else? I'm going to > be playing > mp3's and cds, this will be my stereo as well as my > computer. > I am thinking of getting into composing electronic > music, also. > Midi support will be nice. > > I have always been a die-hard SCSI bigot, but IDE > seems to > have come a long way, and I can buy a ton of > capacity for > nothing. Who is good in IDE? Same people who are > good in SCSI? > (IBM, Seagate) > > I want to be able to grab cd audio in digital form > from cds. Will > any IDE cdroms do this? Or should I buy a cheapo > SCSI card > (ncr53c810 still made? still supported) to drive > the CD and > maybe a backup device? > > What is a good and cheap lan card? I don't really > need fxp type > performance, I'm going to be sitting on the end of a > cable modem > or ADSL at best. I'm sure these days there has to > be a $20-$30 winner. > > Cases: I always liked Enlight. Anything you folks > might recommend > more? > > Any other helpful hints would be appreciated. I am > strapped for > cash at the moment but really need a system upgrade. > The system > will run almost exclusively FreeBSD, although I may > have a smallish > Win98 partition for the first time in years, given > that I should > be able to buy 20 gigs of disk for a song now. > > Pointers to FAQ info would be great, but it always > seems a little > outdated, given the rate at which hardware evolves. > > > thanks in advance, > Craig > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of > the message __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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