[olug] request for motherboard recommendations

[Daniel G. Linder]

Phil Brutsche wrote:
> If he wants to boot off an externally attached drive he needs 
> to do one 
> of these:
> 
> 1) spend money on SCSI
> 2) spend money on FireWire and hope the controller he gets can do it
> 3) Get a Mac - units with integrated firewire can boot off a FireWire drive

[Or Phils comment: USB 2.0 --Dan]

I know the requirement was for USB (or presumably some other pluggable storage device), but how about the IDE carriers that pull out of the front through the drive bay?  They are basically a 3.5" HD housing with a handle that you can pull out.  The piece that stays in the case (the "rails") has an IDE connector on the inside, and a female centronix-looking connnector on the inside that connects to the male centronix-looking connector on the "housing".  The housing handle locks down to engage the data and power cables so you can power the system up and get it to boot.  When you are done, just shut the system down, power it off, and take your hard drive with you.  Since it was stated that these would be two machines purchased for this exact use, this could be an option unless the USB HD is a *must have*.

> > - - Connector for front-side case audio/usb

  I think most motherboards have these, but check before you purchase it...

> > - - Support suspend-to-ram
> 
> Not a problem.
> 
> > - - Support wake-on-keypress from a usb keyboard
> 
> Not a problem.

Never setup a Linux box to do either of these.

Dan