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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!EU.net!sun4nl!charon.cvi.ns.nl!Utrecht.NL.net!hacom.nl!gamp.hacom.nl!usenet From: G. Albert Mietus <albert@gamp.hacom.nl> Subject: Hardware advice for (high end) Home-system needed X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.0.10 Sender: albert@beowulf.gamp.hacom.nl Nntp-Posting-Host: localhost Lines: 63 Organization: We aren't! Should we, then it's SW, Education and Advice. Message-ID: <87ybfnz3lg.fsf@beowulf.gamp.hacom.nl> Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 20:26:50 GMT Hai all, I'm running FreeBSD for a few year now, still on my good old 386. It's becomming a little old and slow now... So, I'm planning to upgrade: that is almost a new system, only re-using the screen the keyboard and the mouse. Once I know which hardware to bay, which brands are good, which are bad. But, Everthing has changed, so I can use a little bit advice on brandnames etc. I'm planning to bay: (see below also) Big big tower (about 10 disk/tape/... positions) P133 CPU with mainboard 32 Mbyte RAM SCSI subsystem: - SCSI (busmaster) controller PCI card - reuse "old" disk - reuse "old" tape drive - possible about 1G disk NO IDE Standard (cheap) "fast" Video card. Standard floppy disk drive Standard COM ports etc. NO or cheap sound support Ethernet card (10Mb/s, coax) I don't want to have the fastest, leastest etc stuff. It's old before you can boot, so I want to go for GOOD and good price/performance. Any suggestions? Please note I'm planning to spend about 2500 to 3000 dutch gulders. (to compare with "foreign" units: You can get a Compac presaro. system for that money) The system will run only FreeBSD, I use X, emacs, gcc and a news server (Cnews). I never play games. Some concrete questions: - I have heard to NCR based SCSI controllers are fast and cheap. TRUE? - Which cards (brandnames) do have them? - Are they all alike? Or are some good and some bad. - Is EDO RAM really faster then normal RAM (for FreeBSD) - Some PCI ethernet card don't work with FreeBSD (2.1 and later). TRUE? - Which (brandname) mainborad are good? - Which are bad? - How about the "Yellow Dragon" - How about those "clone" 686 chips, are they supported? - Are they compatible, faster, slower? - I never play games, so I don't need high-end videocards. TRUE? - Is the S3 Trio 64 video card good? -Is the system realistic, or are parts over/under specified. That is it, I hope. Please post or mail comments. I will summarize, when I get usefull info. Albert ==GAM== Mietus, albert@gamp.hacom.nl.