[geeks] Recommendations/Availability

Andrew Weiss ajwdsp at cloud9.net
Sun Mar 16 13:12:56 CST 2003


I'm looking to upgrade my girlfriend's computer since something got in 
the way of my previous plans... i.e. I am taking the PPro offline and 
re-doing it as a FreeBSD or Gentoo Box for some serious file serving.  
As such it has spots for 12 1" SCA drives and I've got a 3 channel 
NetRaid which is good enough for my purposes... as of now it will only 
have one 9GB system disk and 4 9GB'ers in a RAID 5 array... the rest of 
the 8 bays will be empty.  It's a dual 1MB cache Pro 200 with a DEFPA 
and 10/100 (will be bridging my FDDI segment and my house ethernet 
segment which is a mix of 10 Base T, 100 Base TX, and AUI 10 BaseT)

Sheer reason for upgrading... video card.  I was going to move my 
girlfriend's GeForce 2MX 64 MB PCI card straight over into her 
system... problem is... her current system won't boot with that card 
and won't power off once that card is inserted.  It works with the TNT1 
card.  Her board is some no-name board (Spacewalker something) for an 
AMD K6-350.  It's ok performance-wise, but it has integrated video and 
such that is junk.  I'm looking at replacing it with a system that has 
the following specs:

CPU: Pentium III class (with a good speed boost ... probably 500Mhz +)
RAM: I'd like to re-use my PC-100 sticks (I think the performance will 
be adequate at this time)
Drives: Going to re-use her drives
P/S: She has a 300W P/S ATX  I don't know if it is ATX12V (probably not)
Video: I'd like to have the option of AGP, but maintain compatibility 
with the GeForce 2MX.
Sound: Whatever....  I have a SB AWE 64 ISA card (I think it's ISA... 
don't remember)
Network: I've got cards.
Modem: Nope....Blech
Case: Got several choices here already.

So I was wondering if the above description matches a system any of you 
want to get rid of... e-mail me.
Or if you have a component on the list that is a good step higher than 
an AMD K6-350 e-mail me.
Or if you have any suggestions in general...post list or e-mail.

otherwise I'm going to have to slog through ebay and do this... much 
rather have the money stay local :-)

Purpose for machine:
Run Windows 2000 Server (possibly as a DC - [practice]) but still fast 
enough to play games (not worried about game compatibility since all 
the games in question work on 2K... and I hate XP) for Services for 
Macintosh, Services for Unix, etc. etc., true Windows Fshares, general 
use for girlfriend and her corporate stuff.  With any luck this will be 
the only Windows box in the house and will eventually go to more 
capable OS's... :-)
[Warcraft 3, Wolfenstein {return to}, Diablo II LOD, Baldur's Gate 
stuff, Half-Life stuff, etc.]

Thanks,
Andrew


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