🚀 go-pugleaf

"Craig Evans" <evans.craig.cs@bhp.com.au> writes:

>G'day All,

>I am after a vendor of "LINUX friendly" computer parts in the Melbourne
>area (or a reliable mailorder supplier).

>I am specifically after a new motherboard, CPU (prefer P133+ - possibly in
>dual pentium configs), and Video Card. I used to be up on these bits, but
>with VX/HX/AFX motherboards all being mentioned in the Green Guide, I need
>some help here. Additionally, are Pentium and PPro processors pin
>compatible on motherboards - and if I go Pentium now, what should my
>motherboard be to support PPro later.

I'm almost certain PPro pins are different to Pentium and 6x86 - they
require a different motherboard, and the slot looks quite different.

You probably want to go for a HX motherboard, they are the newest 
variety. The differences are pretty obscure, but it's supposed to be
a bit faster. If you want dual Pentium, you'll pay a bit more for the
M/B (not heaps), and you need actual Intel Pentium chips - 6x86s won't
go dual (they're not designed to).

Try to pick a video card that isn't a brand new model (you won't find
drivers for it, particularly Linux drivers, until a friendly hacker
buys one and decides to write support for it). Apparently, there
are some problems with DirectX support for some video cards under Win95,
but it's difficult to find out what the truth about this is (I suspect
a lot of people have misconfigured systems).

As for suppliers, I don't know. I take risks and buy stuff at swap
meets.

-- 
       Tyson Dowd           # Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in
                            # rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis 
     trd@cs.mu.oz.au        # potiri potes!
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~trd # (Now don't you wish you'd learned Latin?)