RE: [linux-audio-user] New Machine

New Message Reply About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Other groups

Subject: RE: [linux-audio-user] New Machine
From: Mark Knecht (mknecht_AT_controlnet.com)
Date: Wed Mar 19 2003 - 01:19:41 EET


> 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.


New Message Reply About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Other groups

This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Wed Mar 19 2003 - 01:22:24 EET