motherboard decision help

[Michael Gargiullo]

On Sat, 2004-03-13 at 22:28, 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've had really good success with the Tyan boards (both MP and MPX
single and dual proc respectively).

I Honestly don't remember the pricing on the boards though.