[linux-audio-user] New Machine

[Mark Knecht]

> Hi guys! (and gals).
>
> I am looking into building a new machine, and I want to do some
> home-studio
> recording with it.  I was hoping that some of you could lend some of your
> expert advice.
>
> It sounds like SCSI is pretty-much a must in these situations,
> true?  What
> I was wondering about in particular is if anyone has tried anything like
> this:  Setting up a machine with an IDE hard drive to hold the
> system files
> (say an ata 133 7200 rpm...) and a scsi disk for the dumping
> ground of the
> audio programs such as ecasound, audacity or Ardour.  I think I would put
> the swap partition on the scsi drive as well.  Obviously I am trying to
> save a little money here, and I am trying to minimize latency.  (I think
> that somewhere around the $2K mark is my limit.)  I am accustomed
> to using
> multitrack analog units, but digital/computer recording is still
> extremely
> new to me.
>
> Any thoughts on this?
>
> I would also love to hear any suggestions regarding what disks,
> motherboards, cases and heatsinks people recommend and have had luck with.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Chris

Chris,
   Hi. I think you can do this for less money. I just built a new machine
last weekend for way less than half what your considering spending, but I
had a few bits laying around. Some of what I got is even a bit over the top.
You don't need to go so far. Try this for starters:

-Cooler Master Case					$150
-Antec 365-FCA Power Supply (Manual Fan)		$ 80
-Asus - A7V333-X						$ 70
-AMD - Athlon Thoroughbred XP 2600+			$250
-DDR-SDRAM PC2700 - Crucial 512MB			$ 80
-Thermal Take Technology - Volcano 9 CoolMod	$ 26
-Lite-On 48x CD-RW					$ 60
-Sony Floppy						$ 16
-Radeon 9000-64MB						$ 69
								----
								$801


-ATA-133 80GB (2MB Cache) System Drive		$ 80
-1394 OHCI Controller					$ 40
-1394 Maxtor DV rated external drive		$200
-RME HDSP 9652 26 Channel + MIDI			$450
								----
								$770

The stuff at the top I purchased. The stuff near the bottom (Or similar to
it) I already had.

This machine is running RH 8.0 and the PlanetCCRMA flow. Everything works
fine (so far) other than the current Planet kernel cannot enable DMA on my
system drive. I expect to have this solved later this week.

You can probably keep this down around $1K-$1.1K if you just go with a
second internal ATA-133 drive on the second IDE channel and share it with
the CD-RW drive. You can always convert it to 1394 later. Just by an ADS
Pyro drive case for $80.