new system shaping up

[Brent Harding]

What about hp USB 8200 plus?
At 03:56 PM 10/3/00 -0400, you wrote:
>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
>
>
>
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