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Date:      Fri, 27 Jun 1997 14:54:48 -0400 (EDT)
From:      "John T. Farmer" <jfarmer@sabre.goldsword.com>
To:        hasty@rah.star-gate.com, jfarmer@sabre.goldsword.com, ludwigp@bigfoot.com
Cc:        conrads@neosoft.com, freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Motherboard choices [WAS: Re: Advice on audio strategy needed]
Message-ID:  <199706271854.OAA28641@sabre.goldsword.com>

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On Thu, 26 Jun 1997 23:58:12 -0700 Ludwig Pummer said:
>At 11:27 PM 6/26/97 -0400, John T. Farmer wrote:
>>Sigh.  Now I have the other problem.  Client has 20 workstations to
>>be upgraded from Win 3.1 & 386/486 to P-class & Win95.  Now I have to
>>find out which mainboards are solid under Win95 & don't cost an arm & 
>>a leg...  Their mailserver/router will be a FreeBSD box, I know what to
>>use there! :^>
>>
>I work in a computer store (laitron.home.ml.org or www.laitrons.com) and
>have found Asus motherboards (www.asus.com) to be very reliable (i'm a
>technician, not a salesman, btw). The Asus VX97 can be had for $95 (San
>Francisco Bay Area prices; i don't know about Tennessee). If the VX board
>isn't good (or fast) enough, the basic TX97 board is $155. There are also
>models of the TX which have a SoundBlaster 16, more DIMM sockets, ATX form
>factor, or ATI Rage II video). There's also the classic $135 XP55 T2P4
>board (HX chipset) which isn't the latest, but is still a good value. Of
>the boards we sell (Microstar, SuperMicro, Asus, an Iwill or two, Intel,
>FIC), Asus boards give us the least trouble. Sadly, the TX97 is so new that
>you need to install all of the motherboard drivers from the CDROM in order
>to get Win95's plug-and-pray working properly.

Yeah, I messed around with some cheap no-name boards for a couple of
projects until I realized that I'd lost any "savings" in downtime...
I replaced them with ASUS P55 T2P4's & never had another problem.

Right now, that's what I'm recommending for low-cost servers (the T2P4).
It works with all of the Intel chips (haven't tried it with MMX ones
yet.), all the AMD K5-series chips, and the Cyrix 686 chips.
I'm staying away from the new "chip carrier" design until the dust
clears (My understanding is that Pentium II cartridge _will_not_
be the same used for future cpus).

For the Win95 machines, I think that the VX97 (as you suggested) will
be the best choice.

John

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
John T. Farmer			Proprietor, GoldSword Systems
jfarmer@goldsword.com		Public Internet Access in East Tennessee
dial-in (423)470-9953		for info, e-mail to info@goldsword.com
	Network Design, Internet Services & Servers, Consulting



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