building the beast

[jon sutton]

in an effort to separate my recording maching from my email, internet, goof-off machine i have spent hours pouring over the words of wisdom presented here.

i am left, however, with a few questions:

**the asus mobo seems to be the way to be but, what is the diff between an a7a, a7m, and a7v??? also what happens when you add an E to the end of the model number? if the fsb is 266 and the new p4 is 400 is the athalon setup still as quick?

**athalon, t-bird, xp, palamino, and xp t-bird (i swear i saw that today). what gives??

**memory. ecc, non-ecc?? what exactly am i looking for in ddr memory? beyone pc2100 ddr 266 what is all the other crap (184 pin, dimm ddr, 32x72, cl2.5??)

**drives... i was told recently that they had to match. that now seems to be a fairy tale. withour shelling out big jack for scsi drives do i need anything better than the maxtor 7200 ide that i have had for a year now? why are people buying 40 and 60 gig drives for the system drive that probably won't ever see a gig worth of info?

as you can tell, i am solid on.... the floppy drive and the video card! that leaves me about 761 miles from memphis. i do however, have a full tank and am ready to roll so please throw some wisdom my way.

thank you!!