OT-motherboard

[Michael A. Peters]

On Sat, 2006-04-29 at 10:48 -0700, Bob Taylor wrote:
> What Intel or AMD based 32 bit motherboard would you recommend with a
> minimum 1 Gig RAM. I don't require the latest. The first board
> manufactured with 1 Gig RAM would be fine. Of course Linux must fully
> support the board.
> 
> I'm asking because I am totally ignorant about motherboards. :-)

At this point in time - I do not see the point of building a 32-bit
desktop system.

You can build a 64-bit amd system and install 32-bit windows and fedora
on it - if your reasoning was to run a 32-bit operating system.

I personally like nforce and via boards. nforce4 for a 64 bit amd.

Some stuff will probably not be supported, but the major goodies
generally are supported. I don't know if nforce networking is supported,
you may need to use a PCI card - I think it is via a driver called
forcedepth but I'm not sure.

How much ram it has depends upon how much ram you buy.
Generally you want to buy two matching sticks (that work with the board)
- IE two 1GB sticks (for total of 2GB) - as you get a performance boost
with some boards that way.

If you are just buying a new board - there is a good chance you need a
new power supply as well, as they have changed the number of pins
(either from 20 to 24 or vice versa - I forget) needed where the power
supply meets the motherboard. Many new power supplies work with either
(they typically call the 20+4 or something). I recommend Antec - I've
had good luck with their power supplies.

Also note that if you have an existing AGP video card - most new boards
will want you to buy a new video card, as they no longer support AGP.
Some have integrated video (which isn't too bad) and there are still
some that support AGP.

-=-

What is not likely to work with Linux?
Sometimes onboard raid doesn't work. Sometimes (though this is getting
rare) onboard sound doesn't work. nforce and via boards, my experience
is that the onboard sound works just fine. I can't speak to onboard
raid.

onboard firewire - well, for me, firewire that use to work just fine in
FC2/FC3 is now broken, so don't trust that that will work :(

-=-

If you are truly new to motherboards - I suggest you register (free) at
http://www.arstechnica.com/

They have some regular posters who are hardware gurus (go to the
motherboard part of the forum) and can help steer you away from buying a
crap board that has clever marketing.