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PC hardware for source code UNIX
By Bob Gray Bob Gray is co-founder of Boulder Labs, a digital video company. Designing architectures for performance has been his focus since he built an image processing system on UNIX in the late 1970s. He has a PhD in computer science from the University of Colorado.
The Double-Edged SwordIntroduction On the one hand, the enormous marketing pressures of hundreds of PC hardware vendors forces rock bottom prices. On the other, only a small fraction of the thousands of combinations are well balanced. Although there are plenty of high-performing hardware devices, many have marginal value due to design flaws, cost constraints, poor reliability, or inadequate drivers. I explore many of the issues surrounding choosing PC hardware and make some specific recommendations focused on running source code UNIX. This article deals with the hardware components at the "executive" level; see the Web references for details, depth, and additional recommendations. I discuss components in terms of three levels of target systems: low, medium, and high. I'll define a "system" as a CPU, motherboard, disk, memory, CD, floppy, Ethernet, video/graphics card, keyboard, mouse, power supply, and case. Add a monitor and you have a complete workstation. The low system aims for good performance at the lowest possible price. I forgo some upgradability and expansion capability in this system. I get the cost advantage of one- or two-year-old technology. The system, which will be a respectable performer, will cost around $800 to $1,200 (without a monitor). The medium system is a very substantial general-purpose workstation. By increasing the budget to $1,500 to $2,000, I can get a motherboard that will take current generation CPUs, faster memory, and a better disk subsystem. The technology here is about three to nine months old. I will be able to upgrade and expand these systems with bigger/faster disks, lots more fast memory, and faster CPUs. In the high system I will pay a premium for everything, spending $2,200 to $3,500 to have the latest, widely available hardware. Some of these components are just being released. I may find myself helping debug new drivers for this equipment, but be assured, this system will scream! Organization This article dissects a PC system component by component. (See April 1998 ;login: for the motivation to run UNIX on your PC.) I freely give my advice and opinions on what works and what is valuable. I intersperse Web references that will allow you to get more details. The prices mentioned have been found on the Web in one or more places they are not always the lowest. At the end of the article, I mention several integrators; give these guys a list of what you want, and they will quote a system price and maybe even load software for you. You could also purchase the individual components and assemble the system yourself. Look at <http://www.computeresp.com>, <http://www.pricescan.com>, and the other references in this article for price shopping. Enjoy. Cases and Power Supplies You've got to have something to hold, power, and cool all the pieces. Although most any case and power supply will sort of work, there are reasons to be selective. I prefer a case that has a simple single removable side panel or two removable side panels for convenient access. Over the years, I have found the wrap-around style cases a major nuisance. You'll want to think about how big or small of a case to buy. How many I/O peripherals (e.g., tapes, CD-ROMS, DVDs, and disks) will you be connecting? I strongly recommend the ATX-style case, which requires a different kind of power supply. It gives you onboard serial connectors and PS/2-style mouse/keyboard connectors. Even for the low system, I will use an ATX-style case. Most motherboard manufacturers are going over to the ATX form factor. So if you get an ATX case and power supply, you'll have more options when you want to upgrade again. I like the Personal Mid-Tower ATX Enclosure for $69. See <http://www.pcpowercooling.com> and <http://www.american-media.com/gigastar.html>. See <http://www.tdl.com/~netex> for a discussion of other options for a chassis. Also, California PC Products, <http://www.calpc.com>, makes quality cases. Cheap power supplies will cost about $35. The better supplies will have higher quality voltage regulation and a longer lasting, ball-bearing fan with a two-year or longer warranty. I like the quiet operation of the Silencer 235 ATX for $79. If you need lots more power or cooling, look at the Turbo-Cool 450 and 600 which have a five-year warranty and MTBF of 70,000 to 100,000 hours respectively (see <http://www.pcpowercooling.com>). Central Processing Unit At the heart of the workstation is the Central Processing Unit (CPU), which for me must be x86 compatible. Intel makes the Pentium, Pentium-Pro, and Pentium-II. Pentium chips' main competitors, AMD's K6 line and Cyrix's 6x86MX line, generally cost less. They are fully compatible and should be trouble-free. The issues are described in more detail on Tom's hardware Web page: <http://www.tomshardware.com>. The classic Pentium is pretty much at the end of its lifetime. Pentiums with MMX are also thinning out, but still available for about $100 for a 166MHz chip with a fan and a heat sink. MMX instructions themselves can be useful if you're willing to write assembly and have specific applications in mind. Most contemporary games will take advantage of the MMX instructions. Even though most UNIX applications do not use the MMX instructions, you get a 16K instruction and 16K data L1 cache, which makes the MMX option worthwhile for general-purpose computing. A Pentium/MMX 233MHz costs about $200, or you could get the middle Pentium/MMX 200MHz. The connection to the motherboard is called "Socket-7." The Pentium Pro 200 is also near end of its lifetime, but still available. It will give you three instruction pipelines, 8K L1 instruction cache, and 8K L1 data cache, along with L2 cache in sizes of 256K, 512K, or 1M. With its L2 cache that runs at CPU speed, some applications may run 50% faster than on a Pentium with the same clock speed. I have heard a few stories of a Pentium Pro 200 running compute-intensive applications faster than a Pentium II 300MHz. It's likely because the Pentium Pro cache runs at processor speed and the Pentium II's cache runs at one-half the processor speed. The 256K L2 cache versions go for about $325. The 512K version costs $750; but you may find deals on the spot market. The Pentium II is Intel's new CPU line. It requires a motherboard with a "Slot 1" connection. The big win for it is the ability to use SDRAM (see the "Memory" section later in this article). The Pentium II has 16K L1 instruction cache and 16K data cache. The Pentium II can cache only 512MB of RAM. See <http://www.intel.com/pentiumII/specs/fact.htm>. The following Pentium II CPUs have been available for several months:
233/66/512 for $300 The first number is the processor speed in megahertz, the second is the system bus speed in megahertz, and the third is the size of the L2 cache in kilobytes. Just released in April and important for high-end systems are the Pentium II 350/100/512 and the 400/100/512. These new CPUs can cache 4GB of RAM. Notice that the system bus speed has increased to 100MHz. You'll need a newer motherboard to be able to take advantage of the higher system bus speed. Expected to be released in June or July is the Pentium II called "Deschutes." It will run at 100MHz bus speed and come with a so-called "CSRAM" second level cache that will run at CPU clock speed rather than one-half CPU clock in the Pentium II. The Deschutes's cache will be able to access up to 4GB RAM. This CPU will need a new connection, called "Slot 2." See <http://www.thechipmerchant.com> for processors and memory. Motherboards and Chipsets The first issue for choosing a motherboard is deciding what CPU you will be using. You will want to look at the bus speed supported and on board peripherals such as SCSI and Ethernet. I recommend only the ATX form factor; it puts the serial and parallel connectors on board instead of on extra, problematic cables. Some folks will want to run motherboards with multiple processors. Although this article doesn't address it, Symmetric MultiProcessing (SMP) works well with the right hardware and software. Intel provides the following motherboard chipsets:
430TX Pentium chipset The old 430TX and the 430HX are the Socket-7 workhorses. Although they limit cacheable memory to 64MB, they are a great deal for low systems. The 440LX Pentium II chipset comes with AGP (see "Video Graphics" later in this article) and SDRAM support to increase the performance of Pentium II systems. It supports a bus speed of 66MHz. This is the chipset you want if you need a high-performing system today at an economical price. It should serve you well for quite some time. The 440BX Pentium II chipset will finally give you the 100MHz system bus speed. Expect to pay a premium for this new, high system bus chipset, but it should be worth it for high-end systems. The 450NX Deschutes Slot 2 chipset will finally replace the 450GX Pentium Pro chipset for server platforms. This chipset will be the first for Slot 2 and hence run only with the Slot 2 Deschutes CPU. It will support up to quad CPU systems. This chipset will run at 100MHz bus clock and is designed for server systems. Other chipsets include Acer Labs Inc. (ALi), Silicon Integrated Systems, and VIA. See <http://www.tomshardware.com> for more information. There are many motherboard manufacturers incorporating the previously mentioned chips. You can check the references for details or just go with the recommendations I give below. For a given motherboard, you'll want to know how many CPUs it handles, the kind and amount of memory (SDRAM, EDO, FPM, etc.), the system bus speed, the form factor (ATX or AT), and the number of PCI and ISA slots. Also look for what peripherals are supported onboard. Finally, you may want to know about the BIOS supplied and whether it is flashable. See the BIOS section on <http://www.tomshardware.com>. Also see <http://www.anandtech.com> for numerous motherboard reviews. The solid, inexpensive ($150) ASUS P/I-XP55T2P4 motherboard runs the 430HX chipset and supports Pentium, Cyrix, and AMD-K5 CPUs with Socket-7. It is a great candidate for a low system. The FIC PA-2012 ($100) has a 1MB cache and AGP support for Socket-7. This board will run the Pentium, AMD-K6, and Cyrix 6x86MX. Further, it supports SDRAM. Put in an AMD-K6 233 ($120) processor, load it up with SDRAM, and you have a very hot, inexpensive system (see <http://www.fic.com.tw>). For the Pentium Pro, consider the ASUS P/I-P65UP5 with C-P6ND CPU card (two 200MHz P6s, 256K). One of the reviewers runs this as his main system; it has been fast and reliable. The motherboard has 8 SIMM slots onboard, and you can get up to 512MB. It also has five PCI slots and three ISA slots. You can have a total of only seven cards, though, because one of the PCI and one of the ISA slots share the same space. The CPUs are on a daughter card, and you can get a dual Pentium daughter card for it (C-P55T2D) or the dual Pentium Pro card (C-P6ND). See <http://www.asus.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Pentiumpro/P65up5-pknd/p65up5-pknd-spec.html>. The ASUS P2L97-S for $250 is an excellent choice for a Pentium II system using Slot-1. It has an integrated SCSI using the same AIC-7880 chip as on the Adaptec 2940UW. This board takes SDRAM and handles Parity/ECC. The P2L97-DS will handle dual Pentium IIs. The Intel DK440XL motherboard ($600) is a big win if you plan to run a Pentium II. Onboard, it includes the Adaptec AIC-7895 SCSI chip and an Intel 82557, 10/100baseT chip two fewer PCI boards to buy. You'll need to run very current software to take advantage of the very new 7895 chip. This motherboard can handle dual Pentium IIs. This board takes SDRAM and handles Parity/ECC; see <developer.intel.com/design/motherbd/dk/index.htm>. The Intel PR440FX, which handles dual Pentium Pros, has both 10/100 Ethernet and ultrawide SCSI onboard, but only one ISA slot. Memory I am a strong advocate of reliable memory. I frown on those who choose to run without parity or ECC. When things go wrong, I want as much help as possible in pinpointing the problem. Historically, PCs have not had good memory subsystems, but that is changing. You can get very fast memory today, along with full ECC protection. (Error correcting codes allow the correction of one bit error per memory word and detection of up to two bit errors per memory word. If you ran parity detection, two bit errors in the same memory word would be a wash, and the hardware would not report a problem.) You need the right kind of memory SIMMs (DIMMs, etc.) and the right motherboard to support parity or ECC. Generally, you can enable these options in BIOS settings. When buying RAM, look specifically for the features "Parity" and "ECC" in the components, and stick with the more reputable organizations that will ensure that their memory will work in your system. (Some of this new SDRAM memory is borderline.) The new SDRAM is considerably faster than the previously available memory. One of the reviewers ran a trivial memory test ("dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null bs=1024k count=1024") to read and write a gigabyte. He saw about a 50% improvement in speed by using SDRAM over FPM: 100MB/s for DRAM PP FPM and 150MB/s for SDRAM on a PII. A 64MB SDRAM 8x72 parity/ECC module costs about $225. You can look at John McCalpin's benchmarks for more memory tests at <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream>. There are also memory tests in Larry McVoy's "lmbench" tests available in the benchmark ports collections, (<http://www.freebsd.org/ports/benchmarks.html>). A reputable supplier of memory is <http://www.thechipmerchant.com>. I/O Bus I am a fan of SCSI-based I/O. Although IDE disks are cheaper and you don't have to buy a separate controller board, I recommend spending the extra money if you want more reliability or more performance. SCSI gives you a lot more flexibility for connecting devices to your computer, and it gives you the efficiency of "Tagged Command Queuing" (multiple outstanding requests that the drive's firmware can reorder for efficiency). You can have multiple drives seeking while another is transferring. It is easy and efficient to share several disks, a CD-ROM, and tapes on an SCSI bus. You get only two devices per IDE bus, and a transfer on one locks out the other. Although pricey, my favorite SCSI bus controller board is the Adaptec 2940UW for about $220. You can hook up both narrow and wide devices at the same time and run at ultraspeed (see below). Make sure you properly terminate the SCSI bus at the end by using the disk termination jumper or an SCSI active terminator. Some of the new motherboards incorporate SCSI onboard by using the same Adaptec 7880 chip as is in the 2940UW. This saves the cost of a board and a PCI slot. A somewhat less expensive controller card is the Buslogic (now Mylex). Disk The consensus is that SCSI disks are more reliable than IDE drives. Many SCSI drives come with five-year warranties; IDE drives typically have warranties of three years or less. Don't buy a disk without at least a three-year (preferably five) warranty. Typical IDE drives today spin at 5,400 RPM; SCSI disks provide 7,200 RPM performance. There are two significant bus widths: the "narrow" 1-byte, 50-pin kind and the "wide" 2-byte, 68-pin kind. You need the right kind of cables to connect these devices. The Adaptec 2940UW has both kinds of connectors so you can easily mix narrow and wide devices. The two predominant bus speeds in use today are "fast" (10MHz) and "ultra" (20MHz). (Just recently available is the Ultra-2 LVD at 40MHz: 80MB/s.) So a fast-wide SCSI bus can move up to 20MB/s and ultrawide can move up to 40MB/s. (With three high-performance disks going at once, I have measured more than 17MB/s aggregate on fast-wide, so I would expect an aggregate of into the 30s for ultrawide.) Now, what width of SCSI drives do you buy (50pin or 68pin)? If you will have only one or two disks on your SCSI bus, then you don't need the ultrawide version. But if you are building a server with many disks or high-performance disks, you probably want the extra head room of 40MB/s SCSI ultrawide. Copying from one disk to another will require more that 20MB/s aggregate if you are using the new 10,000 RPM disks (see IBM 9ZX below). Although the traditional workstation vendors like SUN and SGI have had Fibre channel to disks or disk towers for a couple of years, I have not seen much FC activity for PCs. Either 80MB/s SCSI will catch on or 100MB/s FC will catch on. Manufacturers are rapidly introducing bigger disks and dropping their smaller products. For example, last summer Seagate phased out its 1GB SCSI Hawk drives. Last fall they phased out their 2GB SCSI Hawk drives. You can still buy 2GB Quantum Atlas II disks, but not for long. On the high end, you can buy up to 23GB disks. I wonder how long 4GB drives will last. These changes make for great deals on the spot market. Check with <http://www.pricewatch.com> for specials. I like the Seagate Barracuda product line (<http://www.seagate.com>). These are solid, high-performance 7,200 RPM drives with five-year warranties.
ST34371N Barracuda 4GB Ultra $550 The higher end drives include the IBM Ultrastar 9ZX spinning at 10,000 RPM and the Seagate Cheetah 4LP. These have faster access times, faster transfer rates, and bigger buffers. IBM claims that its can do 17MB/sec sustained. (See <http://www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/diskdrdl/ultra/9zxdata.htm>). These days, IBM seems to be interested in providing drives to the general market. In the past, only its surplus was available. It will be good if IBM becomes a reliable supplier Ultrastar drives are among the best on the market today. The Quantum Atlas II is also a good drive. Its features include 7,200 RPM, 4.5GB or 9.1GB, 8.0 ms Average Seek Time, and a five-year warranty. Modem The primary consideration with modems is that they be compatible with your Internet service provider. If you are lucky enough to be in an area where 56Kb modems will work, then you can go with either a KFlex or X2-style modem. In early 1998, the ITU standardized on V.90 for 56Kb modems. Most contemporary modems can be updated (FLASH memory) to be V.90 compatible, but again, check what your service provider recommends. Some of us like external modems because they can be reset without resetting the computer. You can see what is happening with all of their status lights. Others prefer internal modems because they are cheaper, don't need a power supply, have fewer wires, and don't take up a serial port. If you intend on working with faxes under UNIX with software like Hylafax, make sure you get a class two modem. This kind, unlike class one, does most of the protocol negotiation in the modem instead of requiring your software to do it. Avoid the nameless modems they can cause you lots of headaches. The following are "name brand" modems that should serve you well:
Zoom/FaxModem 56K external K56Flex ($116) Video/Graphics The most troublesome area for running UNIX on PCs has to do with supporting the video/graphics cards. Before you buy that super hot Voodoo2 card to play DOOM or other games, check what kind of support is available for X11. On a workstation that doesn't have heavy 3-D requirements, the good old Matrox Millenium II 4MB for $210 is an excellent choice. You can run this one up to 1280x1024 by 24 bits. If you want good 1600x1200 resolution or 1800x1440, get 8MB of video memory. The game players will want to look at the new 3-D accelerated boards. Check the PC magazines and <http://www.tomshardware.com> for hints. Beware, the XFree86 Project lags behind for some of these boards. Check <http://www.xfree86.org> to find the currently supported list. The folks at <http://www.suse.de/XSuSE/XSuSE_E.html> use XFree86 as a base and support additional cards. Finally, Xi Graphics, Inc. supports many of the most modern boards. For a modest price, this may be the way to go. See <http://www.xig.com>. Currently, AGP graphics doesn't buy you much performance over PCI graphics cards. However, it does save a PCI slot, and when used properly, it has the potential of taking lots of traffic off of your PCI bus. See <http://www.tomshardware.com> for a discussion of this. The Diamond Steath 3D 2000 4MB PCI is a good lower-end board for $90. CD-ROM There are many good CD-ROM drives. For $100, I like the Toshiba SCSI XM5701B. If you don't have SCSI, get an ATAPI CD-ROM drive for about $60 to work on the IDE controller. <http://www.tdl.com/~netex> has a nice list of CD-ROMS. You may wish to consider the DVD drives. Even though the standards are still in flux, the Sony 5X DVD-ROM drive for $388 is a good bet. Sony offers DVD+RW compatibility as a free option. Floppy These don't matter much. The TEAC 1.44 FLOPPY drive works and costs $25. Ethernet Today you may want to buy a 10/100 card even if your network is running at only 10Mb/s. We have measured the Intel Etherexpress Pro 100+ ($82) at 98Mb/s. It is based on the 82558 chip. Almost as fast, based on the 82557 chip, is the Intel Etherexpress PRO 100B at $60. Cards based on the DEC 21140 chip (de500ba) are also very fast and efficient. Stay away from the nameless cards. Monitor If you are spending a lot of time in front of the computer, get the best monitor you can afford. Once your eyes get bad, no amount of money will bring your eyesight back. A good monitor will substantially lower stress and fatigue again, it's worth it. If you are working for someone, make them understand that you will be happier and more productive if you are looking at a sharper, clearer, no-flicker screen. The economics are compelling. Monitors are always being rated in the PC magazines and trade rags. They provide much more detail than the following presentation, but for a superficial set of opinions, read on. And see <http://www.pcguide.com> for a description of monitor specs. For X11 work, I consider a 17-inch monitor the minimum acceptable size. A 19-inch monitor is better, and you may want to go to a 21-inches for some applications. Note that you want a good 19-inch monitor more than a mediocre 21-inch version. To run a 1280x1024 screen on a 17-inch monitor, you will need dot pitch at least as fine as .25mm. If the dot pitch is larger, you won't be able to distinguish all 1280x1024 pixels. For vertical lines to be as sharp as horizontal lines, you'll need plenty of video bandwidth. Too little and your screen will flicker. I like the monitors shown in the table on the facing page. Ken Merry's "theory" on monitors is that you want to run your monitor at one step below its maximum rated resolution. Thus, if the monitor is rated to 1600x1200, run it only at 1280x1024 and it will look great. See <http://www.tdl.com/~netex>, <http://www.pricewatch.com>, and <http://www.cdw.com> for details on monitors.
Keyboard The KEYTRONIC 104KEY Lifetime Series PS/2 is solid, reliable, and cheap ($35). You may prefer the contour of the Microsoft Natural ($69). Mouse I recommend the Logitech MouseMan three-button version, which costs $25. For $45, you can get the new M-CV46, a contoured version with a forth thumb button. (Stay away from the ones with the scrolling wheels they get in the way.) If you get stuck with a two-button mouse, most Xservers allow you to emulate a three-button mouse by pressing the two buttons at the same time. Tape/Backup/Offline Somewhere, somehow, you'd better be backing up your material! The main modest-cost tape drive contenders are 4mm DAT, 8mm, and DLT, in ascending order of price. These are all SCSI devices that are fast, reliable, and proven. (I look forward to Sony's new AIT, but for now it's unproven and quite expensive $3,000 or so.) For under $1,000, you can get HP's C1554A, which is a DAT DDS-3 storing up to 12GB. The Exabyte 8mm and DLT drives are considerably more expensive. I recommend you stay away from weird controller boards, Travan, 1/4 inch, or other low-cost things. Visit <http://www.necx.com> for prices on various tape drives. The 4mm DAT drives basically come in two flavors these days: DDS-2 and DDS-3. DDS-2 is 4GB uncompressed, 8GB compressed, with the 120m DDS-2 DAT tapes. You can get these tapes for $15 $20. Backup speed is approximately 0.5MB/sec. DDS-3 is 12GB uncompressed, 24GB compressed, on a 125m DDS-3 tape. You'll pay about $25 per tape for these. Backup speed is roughly 11.5MB/sec. If $1,000 is too much, consider getting a refurbished Conner/Seagate (Archive, actually) DDS-2 drive with 4GB/8GB for around $450 from Insight, <http://www.insight.com>. I've had a drive similar to this for quite a while, and it has worked great. If you can dig a little deeper into your budget, they might still have some refurbished Seagate (Archive Python) DDS-3 drives left for about $665. Don't just look at the specials they have listed; hit the specials search page and type in variations on "DDS," "DDS2," "DDS-2," "DDS3," etc. You may want to consider alternatives to tape, such as the Iomega SCSI Zip drive ($150) with disks that cost $7. For more storage look at the Jazz 1GB or 2GB drives for $450 and $90 per 1GB disk. These can also be used as hard drives. The writable CD drives are another option for backing up your system. The drives are down to $450 now, with blank disks costing only a couple of bucks each. Printer UNIX systems get along well with Postscript. An HP LaserJet 6MP makes an excellent, high-quality, medium-volume printer for $900. The Lexmark Optra S 1250 Laser Printer ($950) prints 12 pages per minute at 1200 x 1200 dpi. The 16ppm faster Lexmark Optra S 1620 costs about $1,000. The Lexmark Optra S 1620n for $1,300 comes with 10/100 network connections. The Lexmarks, like the HPs, handle PostScript and PCL. You can pay extra for the Ethernet connected printer, or just put it on a parallel port and use lpr software in your network. For not too much more money, you can get "color" laser printers that produce almost photo quality prints for about 35 cents each. Pages that have just a little color can be as cheap as 5 cents or so. See <http://www.qms.com>, <http://www.lexmark.com> and <http://www.hp.com>. For much less money, you can get ink jet printers. The print quality has improved significantly over the years, but it is still inferior to laser printers. Color ink jet printers are also inexpensive. The HP Deskjet 500c is a good candidate, but unfortunately, most of the ink jet printers don't have Postscript. You'll need to install Ghostscript and APSfilter to convert all of your work into PCL. It is a workable solution if you need to save money and if you don't need laser printer quality. Sound Cards Sound cards and multimedia equipment in general are difficult areas to deal with on PCs running UNIX. Check drivers and recommendations on the appropriate OS homepage before you buy. Here are some other references: <http://www.opensound.com> and <http://www.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/FreeBSD.html>. Universal Power Supply I keep my systems up around the clock. Consider getting a UPS to help you around the power glitches and blackouts. You don't need to spend much to handle the one- or two-second interruptions. A simple system like an APC Back-UPS 400 for $130 will accomplish this. Complete Systems The prepackaged systems such as those from Micron, Gateway, Compaq, HP, and Dell represent good value in the WinTel world. These systems have been optimized for price and compatibility with Windows 95. You'll find they don't all work well with NT and/or UNIX. Generally, the stumbling block for UNIX is the video/graphics card. If you find a prepackaged system with one of the supported cards, you'll probably be fine. Keep in mind that to keep the price down, they generally use less reliable power supplies, cheap IDE drives, and other off brand components such as modems and graphic cards. These often cause headaches, negating the cost advantage. If you need to buy a bunch of boxes, you may be able to amortize the cost of figuring out these issues; for the one- or two-system situation, save yourself the trouble by buying what is known to work well. Integrator Integrators can save you lots of time and maybe some money because they buy and stock the components in bulk. Here you can get a system built from the components you specify. Ask one of the following vendors for a quote on the system you want. Also, visit their Web sites and look at the details of their prepackaged systems. Maybe they already built what you want. Some of the vendors will even preload your source code UNIX system. Also see <http://www.linux.org/hardware/systems.html> for other resellers.
<http://www.tdl.com/~netex> Summary For a low system, look to save money with a Pentium/MMX, AMD, or Cyrix processor. Live with IDE drives: both hard disk and CD-ROM. You'll be using plain, cheap EDO or FPM DRAM. Get at least 32MB more will help, but insist on parity detection. You can save some money with a lower cost video/graphics card. You might drop down a notch or so with a cheap power supply and case, but if possible, stick with the ATX form factor. Watch for the clear-out advertising. For example, OfficeMax is dumping Pentium 166 systems for $700 and 233 systems for $900. But be careful about the video card. Or build your own based on Socket-7 CPUs. Check out <http://www.surplusdirect.com> for deals. For the medium system, you'll want a more current processor, such as Pentium II or K6. Get the fast SDRAM to go with it. (i.e., FIC motherboard for K6). Spend money on SCSI drives. Upgrade to a Matrox Millenium II graphics card. Here are the components of a medium system I'm building:
________$1,797 For the high system, get a motherboard based on the 440BX or 450NX that runs the system bus at 100MHz. Get a Pentium II 350/100/512 or 400/100/512 or even the Pentium Deschutes processor, and think about multiple processors. Sources and Reviewers I am indebted to the following engineers: Ken Merry, Michael Durian, Tom Poindexter, and Joel Rem. They know and understand hardware; I just tried to summarize their knowledge.
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First posted: 8th July 1998 efc Last changed: 8th July 1998 efc |
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