On 17 Jun 99, at 10:30, Loy Pressley wrote:

> I'm soliciting the help of members of this esteemed group in
> building a new computer system.  I need lots of help because I
> don't even know where to begin.  I do know that I'm locked in
> with the current off-the-shelf computer system that I use and
> I've been told by some _very_ knowledgeable people that the best
> way to avoid being locked in again is to build my own computer
> from scratch.  That's what I hope to do.

  While I've enjoyed being able to upgrade my AT-style systems to
fairly current levels of performance and peripherals, if I were to
start over from scratch it would be with an ATX case and power
supply.  I'd go for a "full tower" case, because the mid-tower sized
ATX cases I've used have been a bit cramped -- that's alright if you
know what you are doing and can just build a whole system and then
leave it alone, but it makes testing/experimenting/tinkering a bit
awkward.
  For a motherboard, I'd go with Intel's 440BX chipset, with "Slot 1"
and 100 MHz FSB.  I like the Asus P2B series, but ABit's BH6/BX6/BM6/BP6
line also looks attractive.
  Slot 1, in turn, provides a choice of (Intel...) CPU:  PII, PIII
(Slot 1 models), Celeron (Slot 1 models) and Celeron (PPGA models, with
a "riser" card), anging from 266 (233?) MHz to 500 or higher.
  Some of the early 64MB SDRAM DIMMs were not very reliable, so I'd go
for one or more in 128MB size; "PC100" absolutely required.

  The motherboard's AGP slot is for video; while I like Matrox's cards,
I've also had good experience with an ATI RAGE-series card.  There are
several decent 17" monitors under $200, so I'd want 8MB of video RAM --
but if you have any trouble reading fine print, 4MB might be enough to
support the highest resolution you'd be comfortable with.  [Higher
resolutions mean smaller pixels and smaller text....]

  Most other components you might want will also work with your existing
system; the one exception that springs to mind is that it may not support
USB.  You could go USB or PS/2 on the mouse and keyboard, and I'm not yet
persuaded that it makes a big difference.


David G

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