On Sunday 14 Mar 2004 3:28 am, fred smith wrote: > Gang: > > I'm about to buy a bunch of parts to build a new machine, and am looking > for suggestions/referrals on the motherboard to use. > > I'm interested in an Athlon XP 2600+ (because that seems to be the sweet > spot, pricewise) and there are a ton of motherboards that can support > that processor. > > One MB that has caught my eye is the Gigabyte GA-7VT600-L, a Via KT600 > chipset board. It also has integrated audio and LAN, using Realtec ALC-655 > audio chipset and Realtec 8101L 10/100 LAN chipset. I'd appreciate it if > any of you know of how well this board and these chipsets are supported > in a modern Linux if you'd let me know. This Gigabyte board can be > purchased today for US$63 from newegg (not a plug, just a fact). > > Alternatively, I'd also appreciate suggestions for similarly priced boards > that are known to work well (I'd like to not go much over about $80). (I'm > leaning away from an Nvidia chipset board merely because I don't want to > depend on nvidia for closed-source drivers for the board, though I could > perhaps be convinced otherwise!) One small caveat is I need two serial > ports, and some new boards come with only one (I'm using both a serial > modem and serial UPS). > > I'm not certain which LInux I'm ultimately going to end up using either, > but probably one of Fedora FC1/FC2, or maybe one of the RHEL 3 derivatives, > Whitebox or Tao. > > Feedback will be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance! I also use an Athlon XP 2600 mounted on a K7N2 Delta MB which has the Nvidia chipset. I loaded FC1 onto that with no trouble at all. I did an upgrade to an old PII MB to achieve this and can honestly say that I do not regret this at all. -- Chris Jones
