Re: OT: hardware recommendations?
On Sunday 27 January 2002 22:32, Richard Cobbe wrote:
> Greetings, all.
>
> My PII-233MHz is beginning to show its age (already?!), so I'm looking
> for a replacement. The idea of saving a few bucks by building my own
> system from components has its appeal, but frankly, I'd really rather
> not bother with the effort of trying to make sure that all of the pieces
> work well with Linux: the time it would take is worth more than the
> $100-200 I'd be able to save.
>
> So, I'm looking at Penguin Computing's Tempest 210MP workstation.
> Obviously, with Penguin, Linux compatibility isn't a problem, but they
> sell RedHat, so I'd like to be relatively sure that at least one of the
> three current branches of Debian work well with this stuff. (I'm
> already fairly certain that Potato doesn't have support for the video
> card.)
>
> Oh, and I do in fact run Windows 95 from time to time, mostly for games
> (which require DirectX, so VMWare/Win4Lin won't work, and I haven't yet
> tried WINE).
>
> Here are the components I'm a little concerned about:
>
> Graphics card:
> baseline model is an ATI 8MB Rage Pro AGP; other alternatives
> include the Nvidia GeForce 2 MX (32 MB SDRAM), GeForce 3 (64MB DDR).
> I'd like to go with the ATI, because my graphics needs are pretty
> modest (see below), but X support for the Rage Pro appears somewhat
> dicey. What experiences have people had with this card? Would this
> card require testing or unstable, or does it work with Potato as well?
>
> When I say gaming, I'm not talking about FPS or heavy-duty 3D
> graphics stuff: I tend to prefer strategy games like Civilization
> II/III and FRPGs like Might & Magic, where raw rendering speed
> really isn't all that critical. Plain 2D graphics are far more
> important. And, I've only got a 15" monitor, so resolutions higher
> than 1024x768 give me eye strain.
No experience with the Rage Pro, but I do have the 32MB Xpert2000 AGP running
quite well with woody.
>
> Sound:
> The choices are Creative Labs SoundBlaster 128 PCI or Creative Labs
> SoundBlaster Live! 5.1. Again, my needs under Linux are fairly
> modest: the occasional MPG, AVI, RealAudio, or QuickTime movie.
>
> Based on web searches, the SoundBlaster Live! seems to be supported
> well enough with the emu10k module, and the PCI-128 works well with
> the ALSA drivers. Again: any comments?
>
I have the SoundBlaster 128PC!. Works well with the es1371 module and kde.
> On a second note, my CD-RW drive has apparently just died. (When you
> stick a new blank in, it scans the disk looking for something or other.
> It's no longer finding it on about two thirds of the disks, and attempts
> to burn the other third fail with a buffer underflow---which I've never
> had before, even writing at 4x.) I'm looking for an internal SCSI
> writer---any recommendations? I'm told Plextor is quite good.
>
> Thanks much for any advice,
>
> Richard
hth
bob
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