Running with Lassie

By Jerry Pournelle

July 7, 2003

(Running with Lassie :  Page 1 of 1 )

Column 275 (Continued from the Previous Week)

The Intel D865GBF

The D865GBF is Intel's latest "standard" system motherboard. It has integrated video (Intel Extreme Graphics 2), SoundMAX4* XL featuring Flexible 6 Channel Audio with Jack Sensing, 10/100 Ethernet, Dual Channel 400 (or 333 or 266) Mhz DDRAM memory, an AGP slot, 800, 533, or 400 Front Side Bus speed, and both serial and parallel ATA disk drive controllers. This board is worth what it will cost you, because you can build a machine from most anything you have, then upgrade later, and it will all work.

I built the D865GBF system intending it to be a working machine: It gets a Sony DVD+-RW/+-R/CD drive so I can burn just about any kind of DVD I want, and do system backups on 4.7 GB DVDs; and because it has both serial and parallel ATA drive controllers, I can put four large-capacity hard drives in there.

When I was looking for a case to build the machine in, my major concern was its form factor: I have a good machine built into an Antec "Super Minitower" case that I need to send off to my son Phillip so he and his wife can collect and send pictures of our granddaughter, so I wanted a case of the same size since I didn't have a shipping package for Phillip's machine. I picked the Antec Sonata "Piano Black" Super Mini-Tower largely because the lines were long at Fry's and this one was the right size and right there ready to be hoisted into my cart. It has a 380 Watt power supply, and the box said something about "Super Quiet," but then many say they're quiet.

When I got this home and began the setup I found that the case is beautiful. I don't say that often about computer cases. Moreover, there was a rebate attached to it so that I ended up paying little more than I would for a standard sort of ugly case. Now I had a gorgeous working machine, so it was pretty clear it needed a gorgeous working dog name, and for some reason Lassie came to mind, so that's the name this got.

 Page 1 of 1