# The Unix Hardware Buyer HOWTO

### Eric Raymond

`<esr@thyrsus.com>`

Revision History
Revision 4.2 | 2010-04-11 | Revised by: esr
DVD region-locking firmware is no longer an issue,
Revision 4.1 | 2009-07-01 | Revised by: esr
DTX failed. Finally deprecate SCSI. 32-bit is dead. Avoiding the printer-consumables trap. Invasion of the netbooks.
Revision 4.0 | 2007-11-02 | Revised by: esr
Major revisions by Jonathan Marsden on SATA, bus standards, DVDs and other topics, followed by a cleanup pass from me.
Revision 3.3 | 2007-18-13 | Revised by: esr
Updated for 2007 conditions. CRTs are dead. BTX is dead. CD-ROMs are competely generic now. USB modems are recommended.
Revision 3.2 | 2004-10-28 | Revised by: esr
Fix and remove bad links.
Revision 3.1 | 2004-08-03 | Revised by: esr
Sound cards don't matter any more.
Revision 3.0 | 2004-02-21 | Revised by: esr
Power-protection stuff moved to UPS HOWTO. DIMM memory is gone. Tape drives don't make sense any more. Lots of the theory from my "Ultimate Linux Box" articles now lives here.
Revision 2.4 | 2003-02-22 | Revised by: esr
URL fixes.
Revision 2.3 | 2002-08-06 | Revised by: esr
Buying at the low end isn't a lose anymore. I recommend Athlons. Nuked the section on video standards, EDID takes care of all that now. Also removed the section on older memory types. And keyboards, as the "ergonomic" ones all vanished along with the 1990s carpal-tunnel scare.
Revision 2.2 | 2002-08-05 | Revised by: esr
New section on DVD drives.
Revision 2.1 | 2002-07-08 | Revised by: esr
Corrected Kingston URL. Various small updates for the last year. This HOWTO is much more stable than it used to be.
Revision 2.0 | 2001-08-09 | Revised by: esr
Major update. Revisions based on Ultimate Linux Box experience. Caches are on-chip now. DDS4 tape drives are here. 486 machines, CD caddies, and most non-DDS backup technologies are gone.
Revision 1.1 | 2001-06-13 | Revised by: esr
Mid-2001 update.
Revision 1.0 | 2001-02-06 | Revised by: esr
Initial revision; but see the history in the introduction.

This is your one-stop resource for information about how to buy and configure generic PC hardware for cheap, powerful Unix systems.

|  | Next
|  | Introduction