Dear list, I would like to thank all those who responded to my query about a dual processor that I will be buying. I will certainly go with a better hard disk and within a few months I will probably add another but I'll wait till I need it first. The video card will be AGP and I can wait till Intel drops prices once before I buy. Some people asked what the machine is for. The machine is to be used to analyse libraries of molecules and when this analysis is done there is a bottleneck when the minimum energy conformation of each molecule must be computed. Since I work with large numbers of molecules at any one time and it doesn't matter in what order they are processed, the computation of minimum energy conformation for a large set of molecules should be not too hard to parallelize using threads. (It should also be easy to distribute but that is another matter.) Now and then I will need to use the machine for graphics but not very often and for the most part this can be done remotely. It also seems to me that it is far more economical to purchase a dual processor than two machines and I want a linux box that is built better than your ordinary average PC. Most of the time this machine will sit in a corner and work away on computations related to chemistry. Thanks again for all the helpful replies that I received. Harry Zuzan > > Hello! > > I will be purchasing a dual processor, and although I have > been setting up linux and using it for years, it has been > mostly from a programmer's point of view. I don't know > that much about hardware. Hence, I would appreciate if > some of you would be kind enough to look at the system that > I am proposing. If you have one almost like it and you > have had no problems then I could always make changes required > to make sure that I have little trouble getting a dual processor > up and running and stable. > > I have checked the FAQ and all looks well except for the > Symbios controller on the Intel N440BX motherboard. This > is a new feature, as far as I can tell, and I don't know if a driver > is available to support it. I have stuck with a PCI video > card because I have had bad luck configuring X with an AGP > video card. If there are good AGP cards with good drivers > available, then I can switch. I am planning on using the > slackware 3.5 distribution to install linux. > > Here is the system: > > Dual Pentium II 400 > Intel N440BX motherboard (Supports dual 233-400) > On board EIDE w/ 16550 I/O & ECP/EPP > *Integrated Symbios 53C876 Dual Channel SCSI Contoller(1 wide, 1 narrow) > Flash Bios / Intell BX chipset > 1 x 128MB SDRAM (100MHz) > 9.1GB Quantum Viking UltraWide SCSI Hard Drive > 1.44MB floppy drive > 32x IDE CD-ROM > ATI 3D Xpression+PC2TV 4MB PCI video card > Intel ETherExpress Pro 10/100 PCI NIC > > I don't like to cut corners that only save a few dollars so > suggestions for improvements would be welcome, especially > since I need this machine up and running all the time. > > Thank you for your feedback. > > Harry Zuzan > - Linux SMP list: FIRST see FAQ at http://www.irisa.fr/prive/mentre/smp-faq/ To Unsubscribe: send "unsubscribe linux-smp" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
