 |
Build a Linux Hot Rod
A new computer is a wonderful thing. There's nothing like the sensation of sitting in front of a brand-new rig, souped up for speed and loaded for bear. You are one tough techno trucker. Yeah, that new rig's got 18 wheels, eight axles, a sleeping cab, and a killer sound system sure to rattle cornfields for miles. You ride with pride. You download every utility you can find, just because they'll fit on your massive hard drive. Go ahead. Kludge it up. Hang beaded curtains on it. You're in for the long haul.
| Turn that crusty old machine into a killer Linux box! |
Don't count on it. Within six months, that smokin' rig has downshifted from an 18-wheeler to a pickup truck. Another six months and it's a station wagon with wooden panels. Another six-- can you say Le Car? Rapid obsolescence is a sad, sad thing. I remember getting a great deal from my roommate on a sweet little PC, used but without too many miles on it. It was a perfectly acceptable machine-- the equivalent, say, of a nice used Honda Civic.
Six months later, it wasn't even a skateboard. Wasn't even roller skates. I had a $600 doorstop. It was a 386 with a 200MB hard drive, 8MB of RAM, a 16-color video card, and no sound. I didn't even have the monitor, a Hyundai (that's not a car analogy-- it was literally a Hyundai) that blew up somewhere around the wagon stage.
That clunker is currently up on cinder blocks in my garage, but yours doesn't have to be. You don't have to be MacGyver and build anything out of chewing gum, dental floss, and aluminum foil. Take a look around. Assemble all those old jalopy parts you have lying around your house, and prepare to achieve Stealth. You (yes, YOU) can turn that former 18-wheeler into a Jaguar. Turn that crusty old machine into a killer Linux box-- you don't even need a blowtorch.
Getting Started
We recently did this ourselves. Our hardware wrangler, Roger Chang, went on a scavenging mission on the Screen Savers set. He found all sorts of salvageable parts that weren't much use on their own, but could do some serious cruising when put together. In the dusty vaults of ZDTV, Roger brushed cobwebs off the following:
|
• |
Pentium II 300 processor |
|
• |
ATX form factor PC case |
|
• |
ASUS P2L97-S motherboard |
|
• |
ATI All-in Wonder AGP video card |
|
• |
Quantum Fireball EL hard drive (tentative) |
|
• |
Smart and Friendly CD Rocket CD-R (tentative) |
|
• |
Microsoft mouse |
|
• |
Generic Win95/98 keyboard |
|
• |
Panasonic LCD flat-panel monitor |
|
• |
Creative Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold sound card |
We realize that most of these are pretty nice parts-- we don't have a lot of the old stuff you find lying around most geek households. This is just an example of what you can do with bits and pieces. This pile of parts is now a well-oiled Linux machine-- efficient, fast, powerful. Your components don't even have to be of this quality. You can run Linux in command mode just fine on a 386 with 4 megs of RAM. It's basically no more demanding than DOS. Of course, you'll need more RAM to multitask well. If you want to run the X Window System at a reasonable speed, you probably need a Pentium 100 with 16MB of RAM.
You may not have all of these things handy, so a few purchases may be in order. Leo and I put together a shopping list for a bare-bones machine that will make a really fast Linux box. You may find that the equipment you already have will do-- consider this a guide, and make substitutions as you see fit.
Your Linux Box Shopping List
|
• |
Processor: Intel Celeron 300a-- $65 |
|
• |
Motherboard: Abit BH6-- $105 |
|
• |
RAM: 128MB-- $200 |
|
• |
Case: Asus AT/ATX-- $65 |
|
• |
Celeron fan: Vantec CL-5025-- $35 |
|
• |
Video card: STB Velocity 4400 4MB-- $68 |
|
• |
Sound: Ensoniq AudioPCI 1370-- $22 |
|
• |
NIC: 3COM Etherlink 3C509 Combo-- $45 |
|
• |
Hard drive: IBM DeskStar 14GXP 10GB-- $240 |
|
• |
Floppy: NEC-- $20 |
|
• |
CD-ROM drive: Toshiba XM6002B 16X-- $30 |
|
• |
Monitor: Viewsonic E771 17-inch-- $244 |
|
• |
Speaker: Altec Lansing ACS43-- $25 |
|
• |
Software: Mandrake Linux distribution and Star Office-- $0 |
Total: $1,164
We started from scratch and had to buy a case and monitor, which you probably won't need if you're building from spare parts. We've chosen a Celeron processor-- the older chip sets are inexpensive and easy to overclock. We went a little higher-end on the video and hard drive-- this particular box will run Quake. Yours doesn't have to, so you can save money in those areas, as well. It all depends on what you want to do with the end product. If you want a plain old dedicated Linux computer, go cheap with the detailing-- a server doesn't need a great sound card, video card, or CD-ROM. Speakers aren't necessary at all, and the software is free.
This is a great project for a rainy weekend-- and you don't have to get oil under your fingernails. Be a master mechanic without spending a fortune, and you'll get supreme mileage from your Linux computer for a long time.
Be the coolest geek on the block. Ready? Set?
GO!
|
|
