The Unix Hardware Buyer HOWTO

Eric Raymond

           [email protected]
        

Revision History
Revision 1.1 13 June 2001 Revised by: esr
Mid-2001 update.
Revision 1.0 6 February 2001 Revised by: esr
Initial revision; but see the history in the introduction.

This is your one-stop resource for information about how to buy and configure Intel hardware for cheap, powerful Unix systems.

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1. Purpose and History
1.2. New versions of this document
1.3. Feedback and corrections
1.4. Related resources
2. Overview of the Market
3. Buying the Basics
3.1. Getting Down to Cases
3.2. Power Supplies and Fans
3.3. Motherboards
3.4. Memory
3.5. Buying a Video Card
3.6. Selecting a Monitor
3.6.1. What To Look For On The Spec Sheet.
3.6.2. Eric Buys A Big Monitor: Smart Shopping Tips
3.7. Keyboards
3.8. Floppy Drives
3.9. Printers
3.9.1. GDI printers: avoid!
3.9.2. Non-GDI printers
3.10. Power Protection
3.10.1. Overview
3.10.2. Surge suppressors
3.10.3. Line Conditioners
3.10.4. Standby power supplies (SPSs)
3.10.5. Uninterruptable power supplies (UPSs)
3.11. Radio Frequency Interference
4. Performance Tuning
4.1. How To Pick Your Processor
4.2. Of Memory In...
4.3. Cache Flow
4.3.1. Overview
4.3.2. How Caching Works
4.3.3. A Short Primer on Cache Design
4.4. Suggestions for Buying
4.4.1. Rule 1: Buy only motherboards that have been tested with Unix
4.4.2. Rule 2: Be sure you get enough cache.
4.4.3. Rule 3: "Enough cache" is at least 64K per 16MB of DRAM
4.4.4. Rule 4: If possible, max out the board's cache when you first buy
4.4.5. Caveat
4.5. Bus Wars
4.5.1. Bus Types
4.5.2. Plug And Play
4.5.3. Historical Note
4.6. Disk Wars: IDE vs. SCSI
4.6.1. Overview
4.6.2. Enhanced IDE
4.6.3. SCSI Terminology
4.6.3.1. Logical: SCSI-1, SCSI-2, SCSI-3>
4.6.3.2. Electrical Interface
4.6.3.3. Handshake
4.6.3.4. Synchronous Speed (does not apply for asynchronous option)
4.6.3.5. Path width
4.6.4. Avoiding Pitfalls
4.6.5. Trends to Watch For
4.6.6. More Resources
4.7. Other Disk Decisions
4.7.1. Disk Brands
4.8. Tuning Your I/O Subsystem
4.9. Souping Up X Performance
5. Hardware for Backups
6. Of Mice And Machines
7. Modems
7.1. Overview of the Modem Market
7.2. Internal vs. External
7.3. Pitfalls to Avoid
7.4. A Modem Glossary
8. CD-ROMs and Multimedia Hardware
8.1. CD-ROM Drives
8.2. Sound Cards and Speakers
9. Special considerations when buying laptops
10. How to Buy
10.1. When to Buy
10.2. Where to Buy
10.3. Computer Fairs
10.4. Mail Order
10.5. Computer Superstores
10.6. Other Buying Tips
11. Questions You Should Always Ask Your Vendor
11.1. Minimum Warranty Provisions
11.2. Documentation
11.3. A System Quality Checklist
12. Things to Check when Buying Mail-Order
12.1. Tricks and Traps in Mail-Order Warranties
12.2. Special Questions to Ask Mail-Order Vendors Before Buying
12.3. Payment Method
12.4. Which Clone Vendors to Talk To
12.4.1. Some pans
13. Software to go with your hardware
14. Other Resources on Building Linux PCs
15. Upgrading Older Machines
15.1. Older Memory Types
15.2. If You Must Buy a 486
15.3. Cache Engineering on 486 Machines
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    Introduction