PC Hardware That Works in Ubuntu 7.10

If you were like me who basically takes a cookbook approach to Ubuntu, then this may help you somewhat. I have this old beige box which is the opposite of sexy that lies around in the basement. And I decided to give it a second life. I did some research on some ubuntu forums but they are mostly for whiners and moaners like myself. I was more into looking at what works but instead they are posts for what doesn't work. Like my sound card has no sound or my wifi doesn't work. I did my homework and with some blind faith I just ordered what I think would work.

Here I can tell you what actually works, or at least what works somewhat. I got my goodies from newegg. Notice that they aren't the latest and greatest. These are parts for the budget minded. My motherboard (the almost 5~6 year old K7S5A, which you can still find at eBay) is an old one that won't even accept the newish parts even I want to. If you are looking for a souped up machine, look elsewhere.

Video card:
EVGA 128-A8-N319-LX GeForce FX 5500 128MB 64-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video card.
Ubuntu has something called restricted driver and it works. I don't play games so this card works for me. Plus I am still using my very humble 17" Dell CRT monitor.
UPDATE: 4/28/08
I got myself a whopping 22" hp w2207 monitor with 1680x1050 resoluton. Sadly I can only cajole it to a resolution of 1600x1000, so I got short changed of 400 pixels. This has happened in both 7.10 and now 8.04. I did some research I suspect it's the DVI connection that limits the resolution. I read that if connected through the vga, I might be able to get it. Even I read about it many months ago, I never bothered to try it. Maybe I should. The thread mentioned this was referring to the fx 5200 card, I guess it's close enough.

RAM
pqi POWER Series 1GB (2 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR266 (PC 2100) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model MD641GUOE-X2
The ram works and is recognized by the system. Not much to write about.

to be continued....
DVD
LITE-ON Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 8X DVD-R DL 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM IDE Burner with LightScribe Technology.
I just used it to play my DVD and audio CD so I don't know if its other features work or not. I guess they will, somewhat.

Sound Card
Creative Sound Blaster SB0570 Audigy SE 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card.
I guess this is the piece that sort of gives me the most trouble. I have a pair of speakers from my 7~8 years PC. They work. The sound capture doesn't seem to work. I did some digging online and it seems to be a GNOME problem as opposed to the sound card problem. In the end I was able to make it work from the command line environment. But the Gnome still bitches if I dare to sound capture. I don't see myself using the mic often but I just feel like to make it work. The command I used is from the alsa project.

% arecord -vv -fdat foo.wav

Ctrl-c to stop the recording from the terminal.

And % aplay foo.wav

does play back the sound.