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Re: OT: Hardware Q's



 > Kent West <westk@acu.edu> wrote:

> 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.

According to the specs you have two ide channels, that will allow, you to 
use your harddrive, and a few ide or eide device. In general most devices 
are eide now and some people use the term eide, and ide interchangeable.

> Can I use my current DDR200 RAM on the board, or will I have to scrap it 
> in favor of DDR400?

You probably could, but would limit your memory speed, it would be slower 
in most cases, but might save you a few dollars.

> 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?

The good thing about the amd64 chips is its your choice, you can run 32 
bit code on it, or run 64 bit code. I personally would suggest running 64 
bit code and any 32 bit code use a chroot, but that is just me.

As far as the VIA chipset generally under Gnu/Linux support is very good, 
and in the past they have been very good working with the Open Source 
community. Lately VIA has done some bone headed things and has lost some 
support from the community. Now saying that if you run dual head you will 
most likely use a graphics card, or another device to get the 2nd head to 
work. So I am a little perplexed why you might want an onboard VGA 
solution, as most will not drive two heads.  You will probably end up 
using a graphics card, thus defeating the purpose of onboard VGA.  But 
that all depends on the price I guess, a deal is a deal after all. 

Just a quick side note as you know most 754, and 939 boards, and cpu's 
will be EOL, or end of life soon. That is one reason you will see these 
deals, as they are moving out inventory. If you wanted to spend a little 
more, you could pick up an AM2 board and a dual core cpu for about 50 -70 
dollars more.  You really can't go wrong with this setup, as the chipset 
is supported, I would not worry about a review about a specific board, as 
long as the chipset and onboard devices are supported you should be fine.

Gnu_Raiz



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