new system shaping up

[Frank J. Carmickle]

Hi Chuck

On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, Charles Hallenbeck wrote:
> I am springing for a new system with a 600 MHz Athlon processor and 64 MB

I would highly recommend 128 mb of ram.  You will not regret it.

> ram, an SBlive sound card, two 8GB hard drives, a 56K external modem, and
> a NEC read/write CD drive all for under $1000 from folks I trust and have
> worked with for several years. Two loose ends I could use some feedback
> on:

Good stick with the good guys.

> The proposed video card is an "elsa" system. Anybody know if that is a
> problem down the road? I have no clear need for video display right now,
> but no point selecting a system with known problems.

Unlike windows and there bad news screen readers, you don't need to worry
about video card incompatibilities.  Unless you want to do cool things,
like watch tv on the console, I would just buy a cheep card.  An s3 would
do the trick.  I like using the frame buffer device.  It's nice to have
tux come up on the screen when the kernel boots.  The ati rage 128, the
matrox g200 and g400, s3 cards with a kernel patch, and the permedia2
cards will support this.  Most of us blinks probably don't care about it
but I use my computer as my tv.  It's kind of nice to have a tv around for
friends to watch.

> Second, the CD-ROM is a NEC 
device - anybody have any information of a
> go-nogo nature on that choice? I think I just got religion when it comes
> to backup policy, and a CD drive with write capability is important in
> this new system.

I wouldn't recommend a nec cd burner.  Infact I have never heard a thing
about them.  I would buy either the plextor or a yamaha.  It's not worth
the hassle of trying to get something nonstandard to work.  Kerry correcto
me if I am wrong but I have never seen nec's on the supported list of
drives for cdrdao or cdrecord.  The plextor's and the yamaha's are
reliable drives.  They aren't that expensive either.  I know some people
who have never had problems with the hp's also.

Hope this helped.
Frank