So, I decided this was sufficient excuse to succumb to my desire to get a 64-bit AMD machine, and knock off my mini-ATX form-factor envy at the same time. Thus, a Shuttle SN85G4 (Fry's weekend special - $30 rebate) came home (my Fry's credit card has made it too easy to do things like this) with an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ CPU, 1 GB of RAM and a 80 GB Maxtor SATA drive (thanks, Steve!). We had a lot of fun assembling this cute computer, which isn't much bigger than the G4 Cube that remains one of my favorite computers of all time (up there with the Apple IIe).

The good news is the hardware has been assembled and includes leading edge stuff - the Nvidia nForce board chipset, SATA, 6-channel sound, USB 2.0, FireWire, fast graphics card et al. The bad news is that it is very tricky to get Linux to install on a board that has so many relatively new technologies. Fedora Core 2 hangs on the USB multi-card reader device support, and dies completely when you get to the SATA hard drive.

So... I will be spending most of my non-work, non-family hours reading forums about how to get Linux up on this machine. It's just a matter of time until drivers, kernel, etc. converege, but makes for a non-optimal user experience...
Comments 10:04:52 PM    

Chris Gulker's view from Silicon Valley - in words and pictures