Saving Money...

So I've located this little gem that looks like it will serve my needs well. Now understand that I'm normally an anti-integration nut. Motherboards didn't used to come with IDE controllers, or high speed serial ports and I was used to that. Combining boards has always seemed to be a bad idea to me because of the risks associated with having a single point of failure.

Now I've been through this in just the last week. The voltage regulator on my motherboard burned out and so I needed to replace the darn thing. Thankfully socket-A boards can be had quite cheaply and I solved my problem for $65. Now the board I bought has integrated 10/100 NIC, AC 97 audio and an S3 video card built in (yes and an IDE controller). Way overkill for this simple replacement. But with a board like that you just add drives and plop it in a chassis and you're done.

To the point... I've decided that for this project, the combination of the tuner and the vieo out on the same card is probably wise. It gives me more flexibility when it comes to choosing a motherboard since I only need 1 AGP slot and integrated audio is an option. Though I have a Yamaha GFX waiting in the wings if needed.

It also means that I can pop the Nvidia Geforce 4200 TI back into my Windows box. (yes I have a couple of those, but I don't use them for much).

If I get this video board, I can check off two more items from the requirements list. As it turns out, I'll be getting the DVD bruner and a 160GB HDD donated to fill in the drives requirement.