[lug] [OT] New Mobo Questions

[Michael Deck]

I'm considering replacing the mainboard in one of my elderly Linux boxes. 
Based on discussions in this group and on Tom's Hardware, I'm looking at an 
Asus K7A board with an Athlon 800 chip. I think this would suit my needs 
pretty well.

But I'm concerned about peripherals, specifially IDE. I have a bunch of 
drives right now, I believe some of them are not UltraDMA drives. Somewhere 
I thought I read that the ribbon cables for the Ultra drives are different 
from those of the earlier drives. I'm worried that my current drives won't 
just plug onto the mobo which means investing in drives and spending time 
moving data around.

Another question is the power supply and cooling. The instructions on Tom's 
Hardware suggest overclocking, something I'm not sure I care to take on 
right now. I believe the overclocking is the reason they recommend a 300W 
powersupply and an auxiliary cooling fan.

Is this true? Or should I have the 300W power supply plus the cooling fan 
if I'm going to run this at spec?

Thanks,
   Mike

Michael Deck
Cleanroom Software Engineering, Inc.