Hardware Components
- Motherboard:
Biostar M7NCG.
Built around the
Nvidia Nforce 2, this board has built-in GeForce 4 graphics, sound, LAN,
and firewire, in a tidy micro-ATX form factor.
We've had good luck with Biostar boards before.
allowing an upgrade path. And the price is right: about $65.(review)
- CPU:
AMD Athlon XP 2000+. At about $55, this seems to be
a good tradeoff for value and speed.
- Cases
Homemade/recycled options:
- Re-use an old (full size usually) case
- Build a wood case
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Store-bought options: We may explore purchasing some cases this time, to get smaller size and portability.
Case modification (getting new parts to fit old cases) is actually one of the more
time-consuming parts of the process (can be fun if you have the time though!).
Note: the prices here include power supplies - usually a $30 to $40 option if a good one
is purchased separately for a recycled or homemade case.
See slim micro-ATX case review in Tom's Hardware
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Gorgeous ClearPC transparent acrylic case.
Great for internal lights! $73 (no power supply).
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Antec Minuet with 220 W power supply, $62.
Antec is a reputable power supply manufacturer.
This slim case will only take half-height add-on cards though.
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- Memory: 512 MB PC2100 memory (266 mhz). $65. Board will support even faster memory,
but at a price.
- Power Supply: (if not included with case). About $30 for a decent 300 watt power supply,
rated and approved for Athlon. Scrounged power supplies are, alas, not up to the job.
(AMD and Intel upped the power amperage required on +5 vsb. output).
- Hard Disk: Maxtor 60GB 7200 RPM ATA 133. $55.
- CPU cooling fan. Thermaltake Volcano 9.
This is an 8 cm (case-sized fan), which we will also use to bring in outside air. Has cool LED's,
for power on and HDD in use, saving us the bother of installing separate LED's for those functions. $25.
Need to ensure will fit in slim cases.
- CD-ROM: various, scrounged.
- 3.5 inch floppy: various, scrounged.
- Monitor: various, scrounged (17" monitors are two for $50 at state surplus)
- Keyboard, Mouse: $2 each at State surplus.
Application Software/Operating Systems
- "Office" applications (word processor, spreadsheet etc.)
Open Office Suite (Open Source version of StarOffice - no charge)
- Word-compatible Word Processor
- Excel-compatible Spreadsheet
- Powerpoint compatible multimedia
- Runs under both Windows and Linux
- Web Browser (Opera) (We now strongly recommend FireFox)
- Email Client (Eudora) (We now strongly recommend Thunderbird)
- Games (various)
- Mandrake Linux 9.2 (comes with OpenOffice for Linux)
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