Computer Building and Maintaining

Computer Building and Maintaining

I got tired of the 500MHz Celeron-powered Tekram P6Pro-A5 system I had, so this past December (of 2002) I decided to go AMD. I went with the Athlon XP 2000+ and GA-7ZXE mainboard. This mainboard uses the VIA KT133A chipset.

From there, I didn't do much else. I just swapped mainboards and continued to use the Inwin Q500 11-bay case with 300W power supply. This case was critiqued in Maximum PC magazine's Nov 2000 issue and received a rating of "8".

From there, I decided to pump up the RAM. I'm now up tom 768MB of SDRAM. I would have liked a mainboard that utilized the latest and greatest RAM but I was trying to make this as inexpensive as possible, since I wasn't working.

Shortly after, I found that the AMD Athlon XP 2000+ runs hotter than anything I'd every used before, so I needed a fan. At that time, I was using two fans, but apparently that wasn't enough. I moved some wires out of the airflow until I got around to purchasing two more beefy fans. I added one fan and temps went down from 142 deg F to 132 deg F. I added the last fan and temps dropped down to the lower 120s F. NOT BAD!

Shortly thereafter, I got a job at a place called Network Security Technologies, or NetSec. I had to leave my family in Texas and relocate to Northern Virginia but the money was nice. I decided to enhance my system. I bought a Sony DRU-500 DVD burner that can burn in ALL formats: DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, and DVD-RW. I use it primarily for backup but can copy DVD movies if I want. The drive can also burn CD-Rs and CD-RWs and read DVDs. It was a bit expensive but I LOVE it. Afterward, I bought a MAG Innovision 17" LCD flatscreen monitor. OMG!! I should have done this a long time ago, but of course I would not have been able to afford it back then. This monitor was easy to set up in Linux but not so easy to set up in Windows XP. I couldn't believe that the monitor didn't come with CD-contained drivers. I couldn't understand that. XP wouldn't boot up at all in normal mode, so I had to go into safe-mode, get the drivers, install them, then go back to normal mode. But once I did that, I fell in love. Flatscreens are awesome just looking at the desktop but in gaming its doubly awesome. I'd highly recommend a flatscreen for your desktop setup.

I'm also running a very slim KVM switch that's 4-port that cost me less than $50. The cables share ONE end on the KVM side. Very nice item.

Also, I've just (Feb 2004) bought Altec Lansing VS4121 2.1 speakers...OH MAN. I'll supply pics later. All you have to do is put that system's name in reviews and read the ratings...very nice speakers!

Lastly, I bought both a Logitech USB cordless keyboard and mouse. The mouse is the one that's HOT. It's an Mx700. It's got a hefty weight to it, has a very nice tactile grip where your fingers contact the mouse, and its rechargeable. Both were relatively easy to set up in Linux, though not as easy to setup as was in Windows XP. Anything within 6ft of the desktop is a go with these two items.

Other system components:

My other desktop, which has XP and Slackware on it, is in Texas where our other home is. This is mainly a computer built with leftover parts:

• Pine SIS5600 Slot-1 AGP board with integrated sound card.
• 400MHz Celeron CPU.
• 10-bay tower with AT 250W power suppy.
• 20Gig Western Digital hard drive.
• One PC133 128MB RAM chip and one PC66 64MB RAM chip for a total of 192MB of RAM.
• Creative 4x2x24 CD-R/CD-RW drive.
• Diamond Stealth TNT2 32MB AGP graphics card.
• 1 PCI 10/100Mbps Netgear FA310TX network interface card.
• Soundblaster 16 PCI (I disabled the onboard Crystal CS4235 soundcard, as it wouldn't work in Linux).

New! Dell Precision 410 booting FreeBSD 4.9 Stable, exclusively. The case is just plain hot-dog-diggity...almost completely modular. The CPUs can be replaced with up to 1.1GHz PIIIs or ONE 1.2GHz Celeron...not bad for a $120 purchase. This box runs a Snort IDS sensor and reports to a MySQL database. I can then view network traffic using ACID, a network security analysis tool. This box also contains vulnerability assessment tools (server side) and I run my vulnerability assessments remotely, using a client on my XP Shuttle box:

• 400mhz Dual CPU
• 300W PS
• 128MB SDRAM
• 2x18GB Seagate refurbished SCSI drives
• 1x160GB ATA133 Sanyo hard disk
• 3-port USB 2.0 PCI card w/4-port USB 2.0 front case mount
• 1xSCSI CDROM (I've no idea what the speed on this is)

New! Shuttle SK41G! Almost as small as a set-top box. It runs Windows XP exclusively. It has NO CPU fan or heatsink... well, it comes with something called a heatpipe, that functions as a heatsink. It channels the heat from the CPU to this BIG case fan...awesome:

• Athlon XP 2000+ CPU
• 200W PS
• 1x80GB Seagate IDE drive
• 256 DDR RAM
• Integrated NIC, and video card (although I added an ATI AIW PRO 128 with 32MB RAM)
• 1x Yamaha CDRW Burner