[ale] new PC

[Armsby John-G16665]

I am buying a new PC.  Dual boot windows 98 or 2000 and Mandrake 8.0.  I will be using CompuTime, I guess, in Atlanta.


My first question is compatibility on the video card.  The default cheapie is a Pine Group 16 meg AGP Card.  The chipset I believe is nVidia Riva TNT2-M64 True Bit based upon looking up the 32 meg equivalent on the internet.  I think I am O.K. here.  I see some Asus Riva TNT video cards with a 5.0 Linux rating.......  Other options from CompuTime are: GeForce 32MB/V Out, Matrox G450 16MB, ATI Radeon DDR 32 MB.  I don't do anything fancy.  I want it to be detected and set up.

My second question is modem:  Will the USR 56K PCI/Hardware work?  They claim it is not a winmodem.  I have been using US Robotics for years with Linux.  I am not familiar with the new stuff. 

My third question is the sound blaster card.  I believe The sound Blaster Live is a plug and play card as far as Linux is concerned.  Computime has a SB Live! Value (I don't see that on any list...).  Failing a recommendation, I will just go back and get the Sound Blaster 128 PCI card I had on my old machine.

I plan to take my HP Colorado Travan tape drive, Iomega zip drive, a spare 20Â  gig Maxtor drive, and an ATA 100 controller card and tell Computime to add it together with the disk, CDROM, CDROM burner, video card, modem, sound card, and 3Com 905 10/100 NIC card which comes with the machine. All my old stuff worked with RedHat 6.0 I am sure it will work with Mandrake 8.0.


My problem is the new stuff (for me) is  not specifically found on the compatibility lists.....


A few simple answers would be of great help.  I don't want to start a big hardware thread...


Thanks,



John