Please help specing a system

[Jason Clinton]

Hanasaki JiJi wrote:
> The system is for me.  Always liked ATI and was looking at the 
> All-InWonder boards(8500/9500).  I didn't know NVidia had AduioVisual 
> I/O based boards.  Thought they just had S-Video outs at best??  The 
> closed source drivers is what turns me off on NVidia.

ATI's drivers are closed source now as well. The 8500 and higher are 
will no longer be actively supported by XFree because ATI is 
distributing their own binaries. Having said that, even the binarys have 
a _long_ way to go before their up to par with NVidia on Linux.

I NVidia card capture solutions out there are just usually just the BT 
capture chips sodiered on the free space on the AGP board.

> I have an Asus K7M now and its great.  Dam thing beeps all the time 
> though :(  Muting audio doesn't help.  When the sound is muted through 
> linux, the speaker in the case beeps instead!  I was thinking of one of 
> the following boards.

I have an ASUS AV7133C and I _love_ it. My boyfriend also has an ASUS MB 
(dunno which model) and his beeps quite often too... Dunno what that's 
about, but I'm sure there's a solution.

> Someone had said Tyan was the leader in Dual 
> Athlon.  Then again, someone told me Tyan is on the way out???  The only 
> thing that seems consistant is "get the 760MPX chipset not 760MP 
> chipset".  Noone is able to tell me why MPX is better.  someone even 
> said there was a way to use two Athlon XP instead of MP chips

I'm not aware of a way to use Athlon XP chips. Have you considered 
waiting for the AMD Hammer MP?

>     ASUS - OK.. site is down
>     ASUS - A7M266D
>     Tyan - Thunder K7X (S2468)
>     Tyan - Thunder K7X Pro (S2469)
>     * Cant find any info showing that Linux runs on the above :(
>     * Would like to stick with Debian Woody
>         kernel 2.4.19
>         xfree 4.1.?
> 

The above chipsets are supported. The ASUS A7M266D had a great review on 
Tom's Hardware and I think it uses the Via chipsets which have a good 
track record.

Kernel 2.4.20 and Xfree 4.2.1 is what you should be on now (mostly 
because of bug fixes and enhancements.) Watch out for that Ext3 
corruption bug if you don't use ReiserFS.

> Not sure about a case / powersupply / heat sinks.  The only other system 
> I build had a AMD slot A that came with its own heat sinks on the board. 
>  I think I want the smallest size case possible that will hold:(power, 
> DVD/CDRW/1HD/1NIC/Video/That BT board you refered to.

You need atleast two case fans and a CPU fan. Newer video cards come 
with fans as well. Yes, you're talking about a large system.

Buy a Antec or Sparkle power supply of 350W or more. The materia in your 
case isn't all that important.

> I have heard bad storis about Sis chipsets... Do you know anything about 
> this?

Yup, several SIS chipsets are known to have very bad AGP problems.

> What software would you recommned for:
>     capturing A/V streams?

Zapping (It's a Gnome program)

>     Encoding and to what ?  MPEG1,2,3, something else?

Mplayer, VCR, and several other applications allow you to encode in the 
MPEG4 derivitives (DivX, Quicktime 6, Windows Media 9). Use MPEG4 with 
MP3 or Vorbis until VP3/Theora is ready from Xiphorous. (Which should be 
about six months.)

> Thouse DVD / CD-RW combos work on linux?
>     Any specfic brand/model you suggest and why?

Yes they do. They're all accessed these days by the same MMC driver. 
Lite-On has receive several good reviews and their dirt cheap. Other 
than that, Yamaha is pricey but extremely reliable.

> Any specif NVidia board you recommend from any specific vendor?  I know 
> they all do their own fun "tweaks" to the basic board :(  I am running 
> Debian Woody with XFree 4.1.?

ASUS. ;) I don't have an NVidia card but if I were you I would wait for 
the NV30 chipset to come out. By that time, the AMD Hammer64 will be out 
too and, if nothing else, the NV30 will drive the cost of the $399 
Radeon down to something reasonable. The Radeon driver should also 
finally be stable by then, too.

While I'm predicting, round about April will be the point at which Open 
Source finally reaches critical mass and we'll see a flury Linux 
developments. KDE and Gnome will both reach polished state. Mozilla 1.4 
will come out in it's polished glory. VP3/Theora from Xiph will be 
out... This is going to be an exciting year.

> Thanks again for your help!
> 

My pleasure.

-- 
I don't believe in witty sigs.