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
