July 29, 2003

I've been pleased that I could do most anything Linux-y I wanted with a 300MHz Celeron processor and a motherboard that doesn't recognize more than 256MB of RAM. But I was copying a few gigabytes of data from one drive to another the other day, I realized that if I'm going to move all of my personal web and email to that box, I'm going to need some new hardware. It's been almost four years since I've really done much with PC hardware, and it's like I'm starting from scratch. CPU, motherboard and memory standards alone have gotten more complicated, enough so that I've resisted upgrading on sheer learning curve. I've never been all that confident about my motherboard knowledge, beyond CPU socket type and case form factor. And today's motherboards have so many built-in features these days, a $100 MB and a $250 processor is practically an entire computer now. (Sorry, it has been a while.)

I am quite impressed with my new ASUS A7N8X Deluxe motherboard and AMD Athlon XP 3000+ processor. Here I am, still trying to get over on-board sound, and this thing has not one but two on-board ethernet interfaces, four USB ports with support for two more on-board, IEEE 1394 (Firewire), and serial ATA support which I'm not even going to use. I don't even have an AGP video card. Maybe it was a slight mistake to model my new server off of a configuration meant for gaming, but I just wanted a powerful configuration that works. I think I secretly desire a PC powerful enough for modern gaming, but don't have the cash to put together a box just to run Windows games. My main computer is a laptop, and it's difficult to justify leaping back onto a desktop platform.

Linux support for the A7N8X is not necessarily automatic, something I really should have looked into before purchasing-- as in, boy was that stupid, not checking first. Just goes to show exactly how much time I have for this sort of thing. There are kernel patches to enable most of it, and NVidia has provided a driver for one of the NIC's. There are skeptical reports, but some people seem quite happy with it as a Linux mobo, so I'm not giving up. Looks like this is good advice for Debian users with the ASUS A7N8X, like me. In general, it's a popular motherboard, so eventual support is likely, especially, it sounds like, in later kernels.

Then again, for what I'm paying for static IPs, I could get pretty decent hosting, and then I'd have an extra PC for games...

comments...

bda, July 29, 2003 1:11 AM:

Don't forget to take a look at the low-end SC boxes they're constantly spamming... I got a 1600 (dual P3, comes with one proc, SCSI, etc) and I've been very happy with it.



A coworker picked up two of those while they were having some sort of super sale.. 200 bucks each.



Dell is all sorts of crazy.

bda, July 29, 2003 3:19 AM:

I stopped paying attention to PC hardware when RAM jumped from PC133 to 2100 almost overnight, and VRAM went from an astounding 16 megs to 128.



It was like falling asleep and waking up in the future. Only like a week later or something.



My next machine is also going to be an AMD, though more than likely an Opteron (64 bit goodness; I got a dual Opteron from Pengium Computing for work, and while it's running Debian and therefore not optimized *at all* for anything but blanket x86, it flies like koala with rocketpack), or an Apple PowerMac (G5 yum).



Considering that the Opteron can be had for a third the price than the G5, I expect we all know which machine I'll be getting first. :





Dell constantly has decent machines on sale (300-400 dollars), server and workstations. Check bensbargains.net.



If you check out computergeeks.com, they also have a number of old IBM P3s for 100 bucks. Assuming you don't mind the power consumption and have something to do with them, cheap clustering is pretty fun.

Dan Sanderson, July 29, 2003 10:27 AM:

Holy hell, $329 for a complete Dell Dimension desktop system, 3x as powerful as my fancy laptop for less than the motherboard and CPU I just bought? I buy me one of those for my server and make the other stuff a game box easy! Woo! SimCity 4, here I come!



Dan Sanderson, July 30, 2003 2:10 AM:

Quick update for the Google-searching ASUS owners out there: I can confirm some of the reports that these pages present on the viability of most of the board's features in Linux. I just built a stock 2.4.21 kernel (as of this writing the latest stable Linux kernel at kernel.org) and applied this very simple patch by hand (adding 4 lines to drivers/net/3c59x.c):



http://home.t-online.de/home/Johannes.Deisenhofer/asusa7n8x_3com.diff



You'll want to configure the kernel for:



Sound : Intel ICH (i8xx), SiS? 7012, NVidia nForce Audio or AMD 768/811x



and



Network devices : Ethernet (10 or 100 Mbit) : 3Com cards : 3c590/3c900 series (592/595/597) "Vortex/Boomerang" support



With the patch, the latter will also properly represent the 3Com 3c905C Tornado 2, the on-board NIC closest to the keyboard port.



I haven't bothered with the NVidia NIC yet. NVidia has their own Linux driver for that that must be compiled *after* the kernel has been installed. I'm not sure what I'd do with two NIC's; I suppose this could be a router and a firewall as well as my personal web and email. :)



I don't know enough to confirm the fast IDE stuff, but was able to find the material in the patch discussed on one of those pages in the 2.4.21 kernel code, so I assume it's up to snuff. I also haven't tested the USB ports yet.



Anyhoo, one of the NIC's is working, that's what I mostly cared about for now.

Ponder, August 11, 2003 9:16 AM:

"CPU, motherboard and memory standards alone have gotten more complicated, enough so that I've resisted upgrading on sheer learning curve."

Good Lord! If this is true,the ordinary consuming public might as well give up altogether. The learning curve issue is a huge impediment to the implementation of new technology. Corporations spend billions buying new technology to "stay competitive" and have their employees in training half the time instead of doing whateverthehell it is that the company is in business for. So terrified are they that their competitors will out-tech them, it seems they forget that technology may be limitless, but human beings are not. One has to wonder how much "increased productivity" they actually get when they are perpetually doing the Sisyphus with tech.

Dan Sanderson, August 11, 2003 11:08 AM:

I'm flattered that you'd consider my confusion as a sign that the tech industry is doing something wrong. Now that I've kind of got a handle on things, I can say that it's not so confusing if you're starting with all-new parts in retail boxes (with manuals and the like). There are lots of confusing hardware standards in the world, but to reduce consumer confusion, brand-new parts are typically limited to only a couple. So you can still walk into Costco and buy "computer memory" and succeed-- *if* you have a computer less than a year old.



I lucked out in that I bought the motherboard before the memory and didn't have a pressing need for the hardware, so I had the time to read the motherboard manual, see the memory compatibility description, and take that description to a brick-and-mortar store and ask somebody about it. I originally planned on using older memory I already owned, and knew so little about the changing standards that I didn't know it was incompatible until I actually tried to put it in the slot. That kind of thing stresses me out, and as I get older, I have less patience for gathering and organizing the information required to make those kinds of determinations.



I've gone from the college kid with more time than money willing to help older people with their computers to an older person with more money than time willing to pay a college student for help. (Well, I'm getting there.) It may surprise some people to notice that the latter state has nothing to do with intelligence or technical saavy.