PC component incompatibilities

Components that lack Linux support (a.k.a. "What Not To Buy")

The criterion to avoid being on this list is "works."  I don't distinguish between stuff that works because the vendor actively supports Linux and stuff that works only because some poor hacker reverse-engineered a driver over the dead body of the vendor.

• Very new video cards:
  • There tends to be a lag of several months between when nVidia makes a new product available and when they publish Linux drivers for it.  However, once those drivers appear, they work better than the Windows drivers.  So just make sure that the drivers are out before taking the plunge.
  • I don't know about ATI.
• Very old, non-nVidia video cards:
  • ATI (now AMD) provides absolutely no support for their legacy cards beyond a certain age.
  • Pre-2000, Linux support for classic video cards was provided by drivers included with XFree86.  That support evaporated with the release of XFree86 version 4 in 2000, when all old drivers were flushed to make way for a new driver architecture.  In XFree86 3.x the ATI driver gave me 32 bpp accelerated with my Mach64 card, but with the X.Org version included in Slackware 12, the only thing that works is the unaccelerated and intolerably slow generic VESA driver.
  • nVidia still provides Linux drivers for every video card they ever made.
• The newest line of sound cards by Creative, X-Fi, still has no stable Linux drivers; however, after years of neglect, there is finally some progress being made.  Check for updates at ALSA site and Creative site.
• Pretty much any modem other than old ISA and 9-pin serial port modems is unlikely to work.
• Linux support for video capture devices in general is hit-and-miss, with more misses than hits and no real vendor commitment to improve the situation.  Check video4linux wiki for the latest driver status.

New parts in old computers

Large PATA drive + old BIOS

See Curse of the Large PATA Drive.

ATX PSU backward compatibility fiasco

At some point between 2005 and 2007, most ATX PSUs stopped supplying −5 V.  This broke compatibility with ISA.  Maybe it still works in some cases if none of your ISA cards actually use the −5 V pin, but I've read anecdotes where a PC would not POST unless −5 V was supplied.

The rationale for this change seemed to be quite simply, "−5 V is only used by ISA, and nobody uses ISA anymore."  That makes me a nobody.  I maintain a fax server with an ISA fax modem because it's so hard to find a new modem that works really well with Linux.  I also maintain an old PC with an ISA SoundBlaster 16 so that I can run DOS video games reliably.

On 2007-09-23 I did a search for new PSUs that still supply −5 V, and this is all I found:

• Thermaltake Purepower 1.3 350W, model W0118 ($$)
• PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 510 series ($$$$)
• Assorted low-end PSUs by Sparkle ($)
• Lots of cheap PSUs available from Tiger Direct ($)

Old parts in older computers

+ 430FX chipset

This combination refused to work and I don't know why.  I just got garbage on the screen (colored blocks and noise that shifted and changed).  I put the same video card in a different PC with a slightly newer chipset and it worked fine.  Different PCI video cards in the same slot on the same PC also worked fine, even a 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 which was from the same year as the TNT2.

Gratuitously incompatible Dell components

Quoted from the Wikipedia entry for ATX as of 2007-09-24:

Older Dell computers, particularly those from the Pentium II and III times, are notable for using proprietary power wiring on their power supplies and motherboards.  While the motherboard connectors appear to be standard ATX, and will actually fit a standard power supply, they are not compatible.  Not only have wires been switched from one location to another, but the number of wires for a given voltage has been changed.  Thus, the pins cannot simply be rearranged.

Reportedly incompatible

According to	this combination	does this
Maximum PC May 2006	Antec Neo HE series PSU + Asus A8N32-SLI or A8N-SLI mobo	Boot failure, random crashing
Maximum PC May 2005 + Tom's Hardware Forum	nForce4 mobo + Maxtor DiamondMax 10- or 11-series hard drive	Drive not detected, drive detected but hang while booting Windows

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