From owner-freebsd-hardware Fri Jun 27 12:28:51 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA10053 for hardware-outgoing; Fri, 27 Jun 1997 12:28:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sabre.goldsword.com (sabre.goldsword.com [199.170.202.32]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA10039 for ; Fri, 27 Jun 1997 12:28:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from jfarmer@localhost) by sabre.goldsword.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id OAA28641; Fri, 27 Jun 1997 14:54:48 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 14:54:48 -0400 (EDT) From: "John T. Farmer" Message-Id: <199706271854.OAA28641@sabre.goldsword.com> To: hasty@rah.star-gate.com, jfarmer@sabre.goldsword.com, ludwigp@bigfoot.com Subject: Motherboard choices [WAS: Re: Advice on audio strategy needed] Cc: conrads@neosoft.com, freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Sender: owner-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk 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