A Computer Build, Linux Rant and More!

The working title for this video was "insanely long computer video", and I think you'll soon see why. This video starts with a bit of a sidebar, looking into the hardware of some of the Athlon XP computers I brought home as my previous employer was bought out. I ended up finding two very curious things and thought you might find them interesting. I later tried swapping the BIOS chips between the two Asus boards. The A7V8X-MX SE will POST and work normally with the A7V400-MX SE BIOS, confirming they are much the same board. However, the 200 MHz clock speed remained unusable on the A7V8X-MX SE. The management assumes no responsibility for unforeseen results of using the "wrong" BIOS on a motherboard. In other words, unwise experiments in BIOS substitution and their results are entirely YOUR responsibility! From there, this video moves into a computer build featuring used parts still in good working order based around an Intel D865GBF motherboard and Intel Pentium 4 3.4 GHz Northwood CPU. Higher clocked Northwood core CPUs are somewhat unusual, and given the age of that design, were probably something that Intel didn't intend to produce. This article explains why the Northwood remained in production despite its age, and why someone might choose one over the more advanced Prescott design: http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/696... . Intel never got the Pentium 4 to scale in terms of clock speed like they had hoped it would. AMD's microprocessor products ran cooler, used less power and were generally much better value for the money at that time. (That's also why the Athlon XP systems shown in this video were built around an AMD microprocessor.) Intel ultimately went back to the Pentium M, which became the basis for the Core series microprocessors. My timeline while talking about the Pentium 4 CPUs seems not to have been totally correct. The "Gallatin" core S478 Extreme Edition CPUs were seemingly hopped up Northwood designs, as opposed to enhanced Prescott designs I thought the early ones were. I almost bought one of those Gallatin Extreme Edition CPUs back when I got my Dell Dimension 8300, but later decided that it cost far too much and went with the Prescott instead. After about two years of sitting on most of the parts needed to do this computer build, I finally got around to it. This is the result, made out of a secondhand case from a failed system, a motherboard I bought from maxxarcade complete with processor and RAM, various pieces from other places and a 400 watt power supply from the Goodwill. No, this isn't a terribly state of the art system. It is, however, still powerful enough to do what most people do with a computer and then some. I know how to spec out and build state of the art computers when I need them. Pay attention to the fact that I said "when I need them". If you're going to hate on this video or my efforts, you've totally missed the point. These days, even a fairly old computer is generally still quite useful. Consider yourself warned that I rant a lot about stupidities in Linux in this video. If that's going to upset you, you might want to watch something else. (Again, though, please don't get me wrong here. I've got a lot of respect for Linux and what it stands for. I just wish that it were a lot more usable, approachable and easier to maintain or troubleshoot when things go wrong.)