[sf-lug] the build-a-box project -- LIST
jim stockford
jim at well.com
Wed Sep 6 08:23:17 PDT 2006
i'm gonna have to read that again. what a gold mine.
thanks! Maybe I'll take the 500MB RAM sticks back
for a couple of 1GB sticks. Julie claims that dual
sticks is faster than a single stick, given the same
total RAM.
On Sep 6, 2006, at 1:17 AM, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting jim stockford (jim at well.com):
>
>> Asus P5P800 SE motherboard with Intel 865PE chipset
>
> Modern motherboards consist (mostly) of two chip clusters (actually,
> two
> chips in total, integration having proceeded to that point),
> dubbed the north bridge and south bridge chips, plus maybe two or three
> extra peripheral chips not yet emborged^W integrated into the main two
> clusters, usually ethernet, video, and/or Firewire (aka IEEE-1394).
>
> When a motherboard integrator (like ASUS) says "Intel 865PE chipset",
> it's really a reference to the north bridge -- which ironically has
> basically nil relevance for driver support issues.
>
> In this case, we have:
>
> Intel 865PE north bridge: This is the part that talks to the CPU(s)
> and RAM.
> In this case, it supports an 8xx Pentium D
> series
> P4 Prescott/Celeron D CPU out of the box,
> and
> the BIOS can be reflashed to support a 9xx
> series
> CPU as well in a Socket T (aka LGA 775).
> Does
> DDR400 aka PC 3200 SDRAM DIMMs in up to four
> 184pin DIMM sockets. Buy unbuffered,
> non-ECC
> DIMMs for this puppy. It maxes out at four
> 1GB sticks. If you're feeling lucky and buy
> really good RAM _and_ are careful with
> cooling,
> the BIOS Setup's frequency-setting options
> are
> even overclocking-friendly. (Good luck with
> that. Send me a postcard.)
> Intel ICH5-series south bridge: This is the part that supports all of
> the other I/O functions. This ICH5 drives
> four
> regular ol' PCI slots (no PCI-X, no
> PCI-Express)
> at 800/533MHz and one AGP 4x/8x slot (0.8V
> and 1.5V only). Four USB, two PS/2, one
> legacy
> serial, one legacy parallel, blah blah.
> ICH5 chip
> drives 2x SATA (Linux ata_piix driver) or
> two chains
> of PATA aka legacy IDE (Linux piix driver)
> for
> mass storage.
>
> ICH5 is a pretty traditional south bridge chip family at this point --
> the current offering being ICH7 -- so it poses no real challenges for
> drivers.
>
> Separately on this motherboard, there's a Intel 82540EM gigabit
> ethernet
> chipset (Linux e1000 driver) and a ADI AD1888 sound chip. Linux
> snd_atiixp
> (?) ALSA driver support for this markedly improved a/o 2.6.13 and
> later.
> No integrated video -- so you need a video card, preferably AGP, of
> course.
>
> Form factor is regular ol' ATX (30.5 cm x 21.3cm). Requires a regular
> ol' ATX 12V PSU. AMI BIOS.
>
>> Pentium 4 processor 531 3GHz 800 MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache
>
> Actually, up to 3.8 GHz in-spec, more if you do overclocker tricks.
>
>> "Intel EM64T supporting 64-bit computing" "Intel Hyper-Threading
>> Technology"
>
> Yeah, all that. Dual-core if you want to pay for one. (Don't forget,
> depending on role, most Linux boxes, most of the time, are I/O and
> RAM-bound. It's a really rare Linux box's CPU that isn't loafing
> almost all the time. Personally, I'd sink the discretionary money
> elsewhere -- unless you're a 3D gamer, in which case you throw money in
> big wads at the video card and a bit for the CPU as well.)
>
>> "Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) for fan speed control"
>
> You _may_ be able to assert software control of that. You will
> definitely be able to monitor it.
>
>> two kingston KVR400X64C3A/512 RAM sticks
>
> Me, I'd buy two 1GB sticks, but it's your money (and already spent
> ;->).
> Kingston's all right. Personally, I like Crucial or (better) Mushkin
> EMS, but choice of local vendor's really more important, and you know
> these folks.
>
>> Western Digital WD800JB 80GB hard drive
>
> Nice average PATA drive. Inoffensive, and they don't run hot.
>
>> No-big-brand-name-sticker, little teeny NEC Corporation credit DVD
>> R/RW and CD-R/RW drive Model ND-3550A
>
> I used to say, treat these like they're a little fragile, but they're
> so
> inexpensive these days that who cares? ;-> Anyhow, it's ATAPI, and
> thus runs off the aforementioned piix driver and the rest of the
> bog-standard drivers/ide subsystems. No problems there.
>
>> Plastic bag with CD ROM and yellow sticky with hand writing "Driver
>> for ATI RD 9500 Pro 128 MB VG"
>
> Who-hoo! Frisbee!
>
>> Sony model MPF920 Floppy disk drive
>
> (Party like it's 1989!) Hope you didn't forgo a perfectly good pack of
> chewing gum for that one.
>
>> Sparkle Power Int'l Ltd (SPI) Switching Power Supply Model No
>> ATX-300PA Max DC output 300W
>
> These are really good. I keep a few of these around as spares.
>
> But where's the video card? Is that the ATI 9500 Pro that went with
> that frisbee^W driver CD? Either you didn't list the card explicitly,
> or I stupidly snipped it. Anyway:
>
> Hmm, let's see: Radeon 9500 Pro AGP....
>
> That's built on an R300 NE (PCI ID = 0x4E45) graphics processor. Which
> means you can almost certainly get really decent 3D performance using
> just the standard X.org (e.g., v. 6.9 and up) open-source "radeon"
> driver and Mesa open-source 3D libraries, without having to resort to
> ATI's proprietary, binary-only fglrx driver set.
>
> On account of the sound chip if for no better reason, you should for
> heaven's sake stick to distros using modern 2.6.x kernels, and stay
> away
> from antique chozzeroi that still use 2.4.x kernels in the 21st century
> (**cough** RHEL3 **cough**).
>
> Basically, you should have no driver problems with any _modern_ distro.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> sf-lug mailing list
> sf-lug at linuxmafia.com
> http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/sf-lug
>
More information about the sf-lug
mailing list