From owner-freebsd-newbies Wed Jul 21 13: 1:24 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Received: from mail.surf24.de (mail.surf24.de [212.62.192.50]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D89E8154F3 for ; Wed, 21 Jul 1999 13:01:11 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Rainer.Duffner@surf24.de) Received: from duffner.surf24.de (surf242.surf24.de [212.62.193.242]) by mail.surf24.de (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id VAA16284; Wed, 21 Jul 1999 21:59:44 +0200 Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 21:45:20 +0200 (MESZ) From: Rainer M Duffner Subject: Re: First time for my own PC hardware To: David Wolfskill Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <199907211544.IAA55522@pau-amma.whistle.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII X-Organization: enigma, http://www-stud.fh-konstanz.de/~enigma X-Mailer: ANT RISCOS Marcel [ver 1.46] Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Wed 21 Jul, David Wolfskill wrote: > Same asset-recovery shop had some ATX chassis/power supplies, so I > picked one up. Be sure to get a decent power-supply. German c't magazine did a test some time ago. Tough, the quality seems to have increased, compared from what I saw on the test one year ago. > Happened across a decent-seeming shop that had PC hardware during a > freelance consulting gig, so I bought an ASUS P5A motherboard & some > hardware to stuff in it. (And a monitor, since the monitors I have are > Sun monitors.) > > Got everything home, and found that "ATX" apparently doesn't mean that > an "ATX" motherboard will necessarily fit in an "ATX" chassis. :-( Aren't there two types of ATX-standards ? (The latest is ATX 2.01) I don't visit http://www.tomshardware.com very often, but I'd expect to find some answers on it. (Note that all info on this page may be biased ("sponsors") or not.) > And the motherboard seemed to be shy one jumper (for setting the > voltage to the CPU core). And neither the motherboard nor the chassis > had any screws for attaching one to the other. Duh ! They _should_ seriouly be there. Overwhise: complain ! > So I guess I get to take the chassis back, go to the place where I got > the motherboard, get a chassis that fits, and get an extra jumper & > some screws.... Yup. > If I'm able to get the box put together, and if everything works, I > think the result should be a dramatic improvement over the 3/60. :-} What an understatement ;-) > (Since she's currently using tvtwm, I know I can support that under > FreeBSD, 'cause that's what I'm using as I type this. Maybe I'll try > one of the fancier desktops... if I also get some additional memory for > the box. I'm currently using 32 MB on this desktop at work, so I > thought that 64 MB for her machine should be reasonable.) Yes. More than 64 MB is only good to speed-up make world -j 10 ;-) I've got 64, and I can't complain. Who cares if X takes 5 or 4 secound to start-up ? > I keep getting the impression that PC hardware is ... quirky (to put it > nicely). No, but to get real, good hardware, one needs to spend more money than the average super-market buyer will ever do. (in Germany, computers are nowadays sold mostly in supermarkets, between cheese and fruit-juice, if you want) (My brother's Suse-Box: Gigabyte BXE/333P2/64MB/8MB Elsa/9GB IBMU/7200/) All parts mail-orderd, as almost no shop carries that equipement in stock, and even if, it would be insanely priced. > No real questions (though suggestions are welcome); just thought I'd > share (and rant) a little. Hehe. When we assembled my brother's PC, we had some trouble fitting the PCI-cards, as the manufacturing tolerances added-up very unfavourably...:-( -- And it was a real good case, with a top power-supply (169 DM, <90 USD) BTW: I'll get a 'real' Sun, soon. A friend got an old one at his job and has for now no time to play with it. It is not as old as your 3/60, though. At least, I hope it. Of course, I hope that when the 'lease period' is over, he has completely lost interest in it, and I can buy it for a reasonable sum... cheers, Rainer -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |Rainer Duffner, E-Mail: duffner@fh-konstanz.de | | & Rainer.Duffner@surf24.de | |Fachhochschule Konstanz, Germany | |"What's a Network ?" - Bill Gates, early 1980s | | WWW:http://www-stud.fh-konstanz.de/~duffner | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message