On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 04:57:47PM -0700, Bob Collins wrote: > I am just starting out with Gnu Radio and want to purchase and/or > build a PC that will cause me the fewest extraneous problems. I figure > that those of you using Gnu Radio may have opinions on the matter but > I was unable to find anything in the archives. > > For the RF-IF, I plan on getting Matt Ettus's USRP. (By the way, I > design with FPGAs.)
Good, we can use more of those ;) > Now for the questions: > > 1) Laptop or Desktop: I would prefer to use a laptop but not if it > adds to the pain. I use both. For traveling, demos, etc I run on my laptop. I have two that I'm very happy with: An older IBM X31 (1.4 GHz Pentium M) and a newer Lenovo (nee IBM) X60 (a 1.8 GHz Core Duo). I've got 2GB of RAM in the X60. I'm running Mandriva on the X31, SuSE on the X60. Regarding desktops, I use a dual Opteron 248 running SuSE, but also have a P4 and a dual Athlon that I test on sometimes. > 2) Processor: 32bit or 64bit, AMD or Intel --- any land mines here? > The FAQ talks about speed (1 to 2+ GHz); is this outdated? I love the 64-bit AMD's. Very fast, twice as many registers, support the underdog that's building better processors, etc. I haven't yet tested on one of the EM64T's. The 3 GHz P4's also fly. The only way to go wrong is to get one with a crippled cache. Do _not_ get a Celeron! > 3) USB interface: to minimize the bottleneck, the motherboard or USB > PCI card must not constrain the bandwidth further. Pretty much all of the builtin USB controllers I've seen lately work fine. > 4) Linux distribution: I am currently using Ubuntu but is another > choice going to cause fewer problems? Ubuntu is perfect. There are lots of satisfied users on the list. > 5) Anything else I missed? Don't think so. Regarding speed, I generally buy the fastest thing available that's just below the knee in the curve where the pricing goes nuts. > Thanks, > > -- > Bob Collins > Sunnyvale CA USA Eric _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
