On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 13:53:17 +0100, Anders Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> took time to say the following:
(^_^)On Sunday 04 February 2007 13:34, Stephen P. Molnar, Ph.D. wrote: (^_^)> I am currently running SuSE v9.3 on an old, slow 32bit CPU and am (^_^)> contemplating several upgrades in sequence. I would appreciate some advise (^_^)> as I am definitely not a hardware person and primarily run other folks (^_^)> scientific software (I have a research program in computational chemistry) (^_^)> rather than write my own. (^_^)> (^_^)> The CPU I'm looking at is the AMD Athlon 64 3500+. The motherboard is a (^_^)> MSI K9N Neo-F, MS-7260 Ver 1.0 K9N nForce 550 (I don't know anything about (^_^)> hardware, but I can copy a label). (^_^)> (^_^)> The motherboard only has one PCI slot for a master and a slave. (^_^) (^_^)I guess you mean IDE here I don't know every board out there, but never heard of a board with only one IDE controller/slot. (not to say they don't exist). (^_^)> My current (^_^)> linux box has 3 HD's, but I'm prepared to give one up (keep it as a spare (^_^)> for my Win XP machine). There are 4 SATA connections, but I know nothing (^_^)> about them. I presume that any hard drive connected to one of those must (^_^)> be a SATA HD, or is there some sort of adapter? Also, what about DC/DVD (^_^)> drive how would that be connected? (^_^) (^_^)Normally on the IDE cable, the same connection as for the hard drives This is where you start to lose some performance if you have to have to connect an optical drive and hd to the same controller/slot. (^_^)> I have an old CD drive on the linux box (^_^)> now, but am willing to upgrade it to a DVD. (^_^)> (^_^)> Sorry to have asked so many low level questions, but, as I said, I'm not a (^_^)> hardware person. (^_^) (^_^)Well, I didn't actually see a question anywhere. The hardware looks decent (^_^)enough. If you want to keep using your IDE drives, there are IDE controllers (^_^)you can buy, that connect to a PCI slot. This way you could use all your old (^_^)drives, plus a DVD, even when the motherboard doesn't have room for them. (^_^) (^_^)It is a good idea to go SATA though, if it's in your budget I would throw in (^_^)one or two SATA drives into the package if I were you That is an option (ide controller) especially if he wishes to continue using the ide drives, but even if he gives up one, he's still SOL because you can't put three ide devices on one controller. I would suggest looking at either getting another motherboard with two ide controllers. That way he can keep all his ide hd's PLUS the new DVD he will (should) get. Since a lot of installations are now coming out on DVD. SATA drive prices are still falling so maybe he can get one (or two) that could replace the ide drives he has now, and plus the performance will be greatly enhanced if he got rid of the ide drives all together. The two 320GB sata drives I have only cost $99 each, One other thing as well, I would suggest if he's going to use the same case with the new haedware, I would purchase a bigger/better power supply as well. Just one of those "just in case" type things. :-) Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like. -Will Rogers -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
