(a) Mark (mhr) suggested I buy a bare bones box, when I reported the
problem with the mainboard in this Dell Dimension 2400 box. Possibly I
can have the mainboard repaired (and the PSU, if it is also having
problems), and if so, I will give this one to my Stepson and go the
bare bones box route and have a more powerful box for myself. I looked
at two (2) very low end Desktop mainboards in the store. The one that
seems the most interesting is the Biostar P4M890-M7 TE (a Socket LGA
775 board). If possible, I would like to verify that CentOS 5 (32 bit)
will work properly, out of the box, or with very simple changes. The
Chipset is shown as VIA P4M890/VT8237A. The Graphic chip is shown as
Unichrome Pro I GP. The NIC chip shown as Realtek RTL8201CL PHY and
the Sound Codec is ALC662. It has two (2) PCI slots and I have NICs
and Sound Cards I can install, if the onboard stuff doesn't work on
Linux. The Graphic is something that must work, out of the box.
Searching on CentOS.org I saw things about Realtek NIC chips, but
sounds like they can be made to work. Comments on the probability of
this mainboard working OK, or not, are most welcome! I have downloaded
the Biostar documentation for this mainboard. This mainboard has
support for EIDE, which I need for my HD, DVD-ROM and CD-RW drive. (it
has IDE & SATA controllers).
The other mainboard is the MSI P6NGM-L (MS-7366 Ver. 1.0). This one
has NVIDIA GeForce7050 / nForce610i. Video is the NVIDIA GeForce 7050.
I am not sure if it has support for EIDE. For Storage Devices, they
show PATA and SATA. Will either of those support EIDE? I have much
less information about this mainboard. Audio chip is Realtek ALC888.
LAN chip is Realtek 8201CL.
Both of these mainboards are available locally, and I will not need to
order from the states. I am leaning very strongly to the Biostar, and
very interested in comments from anyone with experience with these
boards, which will be much appreciated.
(b) Planning to use a Celeron 2.0 GHz (Retail) CPU. Will CentOS 5 (32
bit) run on all Celeron's? This Dell Dimension 2400 has a 2.6 GHz
Celeron and ran well, until the mainboard problem.....
TIA & Happy New Year to everyone on this wonderful mailing list!
_______________________________________________
CentOS mailing list
CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
