OT: Hardware Q's
My mobo died (running something like an AMD XP1700 - I forget the exact
specs), and I'm looking for a cheap replacement.
Newegg.com has a:
Biostar GF61M7-combo 32 AMD Athlon64 3000+ Socket 754 NVIDIA GeForce
6100 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
for $126 that looks promising
(http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?Item=N82E16813138042).
I've spent the past few hours googling, trying to determine the
suitability of the system for my needs running Debian, and seem to be
getting conflicting answers. I'm hoping someone here has this board and
can provide better info.
I'm not a gamer; I use a TV-tuner card, run a dual-head setup, browse
and email and inkscape and qcad a bit and might play something more
complex than Freecell if I had the game and the horsepower.
I've got a perfectly usable IDE drive, but I'm unable to determine
absolutely if this mobo has both SATA connections and IDE connections.
(Also, can you plug an IDE drive into a SATA connector? Is IDE the same
as EIDE the same as ATA the same as PATA?) Or will I have to toss my
current IDE drive and spend more $ on a new SATA drive? And if that's
the case, will I have to replace my power supply to get new connectors
to fit the SATA drives? (I've never used SATA.)
Can I use my current DDR200 RAM on the board, or will I have to scrap it
in favor of DDR400?
It appears the audio and LAN chip work with Linux, but I'm getting iffy
results on the GeForce 6100 chipset (yes on Debian, but only with the
vesa driver, etc).
I've found a similar Biostar board with a VIA video chipset (and about
$15 cheaper). Would I be better going the VIA route rather than the
GeForce route?
Do I have to run 64-bit Debian on this processor (which has fewer
working packages than does 32-bit Debian, as I understand it), or can I
continue to run 32-bit Debian on it?
Any other issues? Thanks for any information anyone can provide!
Here's the specs as provided by newegg:
Brand: BIOSTAR
Model: GF61M7-combo 32 Bundle
Bundled CPU: AMD Athlon64 3000+
Chipsets:
- North Bridge: NVIDIA GeForce 6100
- South Bridge: NVIDIA nForce 410
Number of Memory Slots: 2×184pin
Memory Standard: DDR 400
Maximum Memory Supported: 2GB
Expansion Slots:
- AGP Slots: None
- PCI Express x16 1
- PCI Express x1 1
- PCI Slots 2
Storage Devices:
- PATA 2 x ATA 100 up to 4 Devices
- SATA 2 x SATA II SATA RAID 0/1
Onboard Video Chipset: NVIDIA GeForce 6100
Onboard Audio Chipset: Realtek ALC655
- Audio Channels 6 Channels
Onboard LAN Chipset: Realtek 8201BL
- PHY LAN Speed 10/100Mbps Max LAN Speed 10/100Mbps
--
Kent
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