Fancy New Computer: Will it work with linux?

[Bob Raymond]

On Monday 16 December 2002 01:40 am, Joel Hammer wrote:
> Well, I am buying a new computer for my college son, since he says it hurts
> his back to carry his laptop back and forth to school (he has to walk 4 or
> 5 city blocks). So, I am bidding on the following machine on eBay. It
> sounds nice, but I would like someone to explain a couple of items to me.

Geez.. what do laptops weigh, like eight pounds?  Exercise and muscle building 
might be cheaper... though every son wants a new computer or at least parts 
for his old one for Christmas ;-)

> ======New fancy computer specifications=================
> Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz

He doesn't really need something that fast unless he's doing some really high 
powered stuff like video editing.

> 533 MHz System Bus Speed Socket 478
> Hyper Pipelined Technology

Hyperthreading is going to help if you ever want to upgrade the CPU- the new 
3.06ghz P4 is hyperthreaded, as the Xeons have been for some time.

> NEW 512k Advanced L2 Advanced Transfer Cache!!
> 128 Bit Enhanced Floating Point Unit
> Advanced Dynamic Execution
>
> Motherboard
> Pentium 4 Motherboard
>
> SiS? 645DX & SiS? 962L chipset
> Integrated USB 2.0
> ATX P4S5A/DX Motherboard

I'm guessing that's Asus because their model names look something like that.  
Asus is known to be quite reliable.

> 2 DDR Slots, 2 SDRAM Slots, UDMA 100

hmm.. remember you can only use one or the other.  I don't like the idea of 2 
slots for RAM because it makes expansion difficult, but to each his own.

> 2 USB Ports in Back, 2 USB Ports in Front
> 1 Parallel/Printer Port, 2 Serial Ports
> USB 2.0 Ready!

Should be fine- make sure the kernel is new enough to have EHCI support for 
USB 2.0

> Memory
> 512MB PC2700 DDR RAM 333MHz
> Lifetime Warranty
> 168-Pin DIMM
> ===========End of new fancy computer specifications====================
>
> 1.  How do they gave a bus speed of 533 (or is that a clock speed?). They
> seem to be taking the 133 bus speed and multiplying it by 4. What's going
> on?

The front side bus of the newer Pentium 4's is 533mhz.

> 2. What's with this DDR RAM 333 MHz stuff.

The RAM is Double Data Rate clocked at 333Mhz.

> 3. They mention, somewhere, chip drivers supplied by SiS for windows XP.
> Why are they needed?

Because the motherboard is newer than XP, XP doesn't have support out of the 
box.

						Bob Raymond