We're going to need a computer for the new museum's office/workbench area. Requirements: 1. It must have a very small footprint. A full tower, anything rack-mounted, servers, etc. are not suitable for our current situation. Ideally a "mini" case (ha! a minicomputer...) would serve us well. 2. We don't need a laptop and would rather have a desktop anyhow, so we can more easily upgrade it and avoid proprietary stuff. 3. Its motherboard should have a sufficient CPU and enough RAM capacity to run a modern operating system. 4. Serial port. :) 5. We'll need this in the next few weeks. That's about it. I figure we can buy a cheap SSD, install Windows 7 SP1 -- which is the least-worst version of Windows -- and make it dual-boot into Linux. I can do all of that myself, but it would certainly save time if the system gets to us already configured this way. I have a spare USB keyboard/mouse to donate. VCF owns a few small-ish square LCDs, but we could definitely use a donation of a modern wide-screen LCD -- perhaps a 22-inch or around that size.
Evan, might I suggest that you check with Dan from computer deconstruction. He might have something that is recent and workable. Anything he has should be able to run Linux. I'm not sure about Windows 10 though. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
On Feb 5, 2016, at 12:26 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: We're going to need a computer for the new museum's office/workbench area. Requirements: 1. It must have a very small footprint. A full tower, anything rack-mounted, servers, etc. are not suitable for our current situation. Ideally a "mini" case (ha! a minicomputer...) would serve us well. 2. We don't need a laptop and would rather have a desktop anyhow, so we can more easily upgrade it and avoid proprietary stuff. 3. Its motherboard should have a sufficient CPU and enough RAM capacity to run a modern operating system. 4. Serial port. :) 5. We'll need this in the next few weeks. That's about it. I figure we can buy a cheap SSD, install Windows 7 SP1 -- which is the least-worst version of Windows -- and make it dual-boot into Linux. I can do all of that myself, but it would certainly save time if the system gets to us already configured this way. I have a spare USB keyboard/mouse to donate. VCF owns a few small-ish square LCDs, but we could definitely use a donation of a modern wide-screen LCD -- perhaps a 22-inch or around that size. Dell Optiplex 755 work for you???
Evan, There are Small form factor (SFF) DC5800 by HP on site that you can have. They have sale / disposal restrictions, but you could run it until it dies and return it for disposal. There are legitimate volume license keys you can utilize, although keeping it patched and W10 free while not on a domain is going to be a challenge. Martin On 2/5/2016 12:26 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
We're going to need a computer for the new museum's office/workbench area.
Requirements:
1. It must have a very small footprint. A full tower, anything rack-mounted, servers, etc. are not suitable for our current situation. Ideally a "mini" case (ha! a minicomputer...) would serve us well.
2. We don't need a laptop and would rather have a desktop anyhow, so we can more easily upgrade it and avoid proprietary stuff.
3. Its motherboard should have a sufficient CPU and enough RAM capacity to run a modern operating system.
4. Serial port. :)
5. We'll need this in the next few weeks.
That's about it. I figure we can buy a cheap SSD, install Windows 7 SP1 -- which is the least-worst version of Windows -- and make it dual-boot into Linux. I can do all of that myself, but it would certainly save time if the system gets to us already configured this way.
I have a spare USB keyboard/mouse to donate. VCF owns a few small-ish square LCDs, but we could definitely use a donation of a modern wide-screen LCD -- perhaps a 22-inch or around that size.
Evan, Good luck on the serial port. More likely, get a serial to USB adapter and use that for your serial port requirement. And why Winders at all? Microsoft is shoving Win 10 down everybody's throat, the maker of the FTDI driver for the usb to serial chip is screwing around with the driver and breaking FTDI clone adapters. What application that runs only on Winders is driving this requirement? Bill Dudley
On 2/5/2016 12:26 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
We're going to need a computer for the new museum's office/workbench area.
Requirements:
1. It must have a very small footprint. A full tower, anything rack-mounted, servers, etc. are not suitable for our current situation. Ideally a "mini" case (ha! a minicomputer...) would serve us well.
2. We don't need a laptop and would rather have a desktop anyhow, so we can more easily upgrade it and avoid proprietary stuff.
3. Its motherboard should have a sufficient CPU and enough RAM capacity to run a modern operating system.
4. Serial port. :)
5. We'll need this in the next few weeks.
That's about it. I figure we can buy a cheap SSD, install Windows 7 SP1 -- which is the least-worst version of Windows -- and make it dual-boot into Linux. I can do all of that myself, but it would certainly save time if the system gets to us already configured this way.
I have a spare USB keyboard/mouse to donate. VCF owns a few small-ish square LCDs, but we could definitely use a donation of a modern wide-screen LCD -- perhaps a 22-inch or around that size.
And why Winders at all?
I'm certainly not a fan, but there are two possible reasons why we should dual-boot: 1. Corey C. said there may be biz applications we need (accounting, inventory, etc.) 2. If the wide-format printer works, then there may or may not be Linux drivers. (Color cartridge arrived at my home two days ago. Will bring it to the museum tomorrow, assuming this snow doesn't become anything major. I have a really crappy old Ubuntu laptop (daily laptop is a Chromebook). Will try to get an openprinting.org driver on it tonight and see if it works with the printer.
We might be in luck: http://www.openprinting.org/printer/Epson/Epson-Stylus_Photo_1280 .... will install on my laptop tonight and hopefully do a test print tomorrow. There's no particular harm in making the computer dual-boot as long as we can fend off Windows 10.
It's pretty easy to set up Windows 7 in VirtualBox. I did that so I couldprint out coupons.com grocery coupons, since their DRM printer programwon't work on Linux. cb From: Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> Cc: Evan Koblentz <evan@snarc.net> Sent: Friday, February 5, 2016 1:09 PM Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] Linux printer driver We might be in luck: http://www.openprinting.org/printer/Epson/Epson-Stylus_Photo_1280 .... will install on my laptop tonight and hopefully do a test print tomorrow. There's no particular harm in making the computer dual-boot as long as we can fend off Windows 10.
So here's a crazy idea. What about talking to Amazon AWS about getting (maybe donated) cloud computer(s). You'd only need something to remote desktop, run the printer. On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 1:05 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
And why Winders at all?
I'm certainly not a fan, but there are two possible reasons why we should dual-boot:
1. Corey C. said there may be biz applications we need (accounting, inventory, etc.)
2. If the wide-format printer works, then there may or may not be Linux drivers. (Color cartridge arrived at my home two days ago. Will bring it to the museum tomorrow, assuming this snow doesn't become anything major. I have a really crappy old Ubuntu laptop (daily laptop is a Chromebook). Will try to get an openprinting.org driver on it tonight and see if it works with the printer.
On newegg, $12 gets you a 2 port serial card (pci flavor) On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 1:13 PM, Bob Flanders <bob.flanders@gmail.com> wrote:
So here's a crazy idea. What about talking to Amazon AWS about getting (maybe donated) cloud computer(s). You'd only need something to remote desktop, run the printer.
On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 1:05 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
And why Winders at all?
I'm certainly not a fan, but there are two possible reasons why we should dual-boot:
1. Corey C. said there may be biz applications we need (accounting, inventory, etc.)
2. If the wide-format printer works, then there may or may not be Linux drivers. (Color cartridge arrived at my home two days ago. Will bring it to the museum tomorrow, assuming this snow doesn't become anything major. I have a really crappy old Ubuntu laptop (daily laptop is a Chromebook). Will try to get an openprinting.org driver on it tonight and see if it works with the printer.
Bill, Why "Good luck wth a serial port"? You can get new HP Business desktops with a serial port... ... some times its "optional" but they are about.. HP http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/desktops/hp-prodesk-400-g3-microtower-pc-p-p0d... Lenovo http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops/thinkcentre/m-series-sff/m900-sff/#tab... Dell http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/optiplex-xe2/pd?oc=soxem57p97&model_id=opt... Dave Wade G4UGM
-----Original Message----- From: vcf-midatlantic [mailto:vcf-midatlantic- bounces@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org] On Behalf Of William Dudley via vcf-midatlantic Sent: 05 February 2016 15:06 To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> Cc: William Dudley <wfdudley@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] So, we're going to need an office computer.
Evan,
Good luck on the serial port.
More likely, get a serial to USB adapter and use that for your serial port requirement.
And why Winders at all? Microsoft is shoving Win 10 down everybody's throat, the maker of the FTDI driver for the usb to serial chip is screwing around with the driver and breaking FTDI clone adapters. What application that runs only on Winders is driving this requirement?
Bill Dudley
On 2/5/2016 12:26 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
We're going to need a computer for the new museum's office/workbench area.
Requirements:
1. It must have a very small footprint. A full tower, anything rack-mounted, servers, etc. are not suitable for our current situation. Ideally a "mini" case (ha! a minicomputer...) would serve us well.
2. We don't need a laptop and would rather have a desktop anyhow, so we can more easily upgrade it and avoid proprietary stuff.
3. Its motherboard should have a sufficient CPU and enough RAM capacity to run a modern operating system.
4. Serial port. :)
5. We'll need this in the next few weeks.
That's about it. I figure we can buy a cheap SSD, install Windows 7 SP1 -- which is the least-worst version of Windows -- and make it dual-boot into Linux. I can do all of that myself, but it would certainly save time if the system gets to us already configured this way.
I have a spare USB keyboard/mouse to donate. VCF owns a few small-ish square LCDs, but we could definitely use a donation of a modern wide-screen LCD -- perhaps a 22-inch or around that size.
And a PCI serial port card with a gen-u-wine 16550 is about $25 on Amazon On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 3:19 PM, Dave G4UGM via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Bill, Why "Good luck wth a serial port"? You can get new HP Business desktops with a serial port... ... some times its "optional" but they are about..
HP
http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/desktops/hp-prodesk-400-g3-microtower-pc-p-p0d...
Lenovo
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops/thinkcentre/m-series-sff/m900-sff/#tab...
Dell
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/optiplex-xe2/pd?oc=soxem57p97&model_id=opt...
Dave Wade G4UGM
-----Original Message----- From: vcf-midatlantic [mailto:vcf-midatlantic- bounces@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org] On Behalf Of William Dudley via vcf-midatlantic Sent: 05 February 2016 15:06 To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org
Cc: William Dudley <wfdudley@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] So, we're going to need an office computer.
Evan,
Good luck on the serial port.
More likely, get a serial to USB adapter and use that for your serial port requirement.
And why Winders at all? Microsoft is shoving Win 10 down everybody's throat, the maker of the FTDI driver for the usb to serial chip is screwing around with the driver and breaking FTDI clone adapters. What application that runs only on Winders is driving this requirement?
Bill Dudley
On 2/5/2016 12:26 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
We're going to need a computer for the new museum's office/workbench area.
Requirements:
1. It must have a very small footprint. A full tower, anything rack-mounted, servers, etc. are not suitable for our current situation. Ideally a "mini" case (ha! a minicomputer...) would serve us well.
2. We don't need a laptop and would rather have a desktop anyhow, so we can more easily upgrade it and avoid proprietary stuff.
3. Its motherboard should have a sufficient CPU and enough RAM capacity to run a modern operating system.
4. Serial port. :)
5. We'll need this in the next few weeks.
That's about it. I figure we can buy a cheap SSD, install Windows 7 SP1 -- which is the least-worst version of Windows -- and make it dual-boot into Linux. I can do all of that myself, but it would certainly save time if the system gets to us already configured this way.
I have a spare USB keyboard/mouse to donate. VCF owns a few small-ish square LCDs, but we could definitely use a donation of a modern wide-screen LCD -- perhaps a 22-inch or around that size.
Dave, That may not be much use. So despite the fact this http://www8.hp.com/us/en/workstations/z230.html#!&pd1=1 comes with 2 serial ports it has NO PCI slots, and PCI-E Serial Adaptors are a different animal.... Dave G4UG
-----Original Message----- From: vcf-midatlantic [mailto:vcf-midatlantic- bounces@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org] On Behalf Of Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic Sent: 05 February 2016 20:22 To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> Cc: Dean Notarnicola <dnotarnicola@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] So, we're going to need an office computer.
And a PCI serial port card with a gen-u-wine 16550 is about $25 on Amazon
On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 3:19 PM, Dave G4UGM via vcf-midatlantic < vcf- midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Bill, Why "Good luck wth a serial port"? You can get new HP Business desktops with a serial port... ... some times its "optional" but they are about..
HP
http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/desktops/hp-prodesk-400-g3- microtower-pc -p-p0d98ut-aba--1
Lenovo
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops/thinkcentre/m-series-sff/m900- sf f/#tab-features
Dell
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/optiplex- xe2/pd?oc=soxem57p97&model_ id=optiplex-xe2&l=en&s=bsd
Dave Wade G4UGM
-----Original Message----- From: vcf-midatlantic [mailto:vcf-midatlantic- bounces@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org] On Behalf Of William Dudley via vcf-midatlantic Sent: 05 February 2016 15:06 To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org
Cc: William Dudley <wfdudley@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] So, we're going to need an office computer.
Evan,
Good luck on the serial port.
More likely, get a serial to USB adapter and use that for your serial port requirement.
And why Winders at all? Microsoft is shoving Win 10 down everybody's throat, the maker of the FTDI driver for the usb to serial chip is screwing around with the driver and breaking FTDI clone adapters. What application that runs only on Winders is driving this requirement?
Bill Dudley
On 2/5/2016 12:26 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
We're going to need a computer for the new museum's office/workbench area.
Requirements:
1. It must have a very small footprint. A full tower, anything rack-mounted, servers, etc. are not suitable for our current situation. Ideally a "mini" case (ha! a minicomputer...) would serve us well.
2. We don't need a laptop and would rather have a desktop anyhow, so we can more easily upgrade it and avoid proprietary stuff.
3. Its motherboard should have a sufficient CPU and enough RAM capacity to run a modern operating system.
4. Serial port. :)
5. We'll need this in the next few weeks.
That's about it. I figure we can buy a cheap SSD, install Windows 7 SP1 -- which is the least-worst version of Windows -- and make it dual-boot into Linux. I can do all of that myself, but it would certainly save time if the system gets to us already configured this way.
I have a spare USB keyboard/mouse to donate. VCF owns a few small-ish square LCDs, but we could definitely use a donation of a modern wide-screen LCD -- perhaps a 22-inch or around that size.
NO PCI slots, and PCI-E Serial Adaptors are a different animal....
For 99% of use cases, USB serial adapters using Prolific or FTDI are sufficient. I use two Prolific adapters with my desktop and laptop almost exclusively with computers made before 1980 with no real problems. Thanks, Jonathan
-----Original Message----- From: vcf-midatlantic [mailto:vcf-midatlantic- bounces@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org] On Behalf Of Systems Glitch via vcf-midatlantic Sent: 05 February 2016 21:05 To: vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org Cc: Systems Glitch <systems.glitch@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] So, we're going to need an office computer.
NO PCI slots, and PCI-E Serial Adaptors are a different animal....
For 99% of use cases, USB serial adapters using Prolific or FTDI are sufficient. I use two Prolific adapters with my desktop and laptop almost exclusively with computers made before 1980 with no real problems.
I have a box full, and generally they work just fine, as you say!. Some of my plotters don't like them, and some older real ports will do 45 & 50 baud which is great for Baudot TTYs. BUT in an office/museum situation, a real serial port can be useful, its one less plug and socket to work loose, and it frees a USB port for other things.
Thanks, Jonathan
Dave
As long as someone is prepared to support you'll be fine with whatever the person doing the support wants. Me personally I think a real serial port is more reliable. I have had to re-install drivers, reboot the computer, etc when using the USB-->serial cable on Win Vista and up. Even with a new machine there is usually a serial port on the motherboard, just connect an internal serial port cable to the motherboard and pull it from the motherboard to an external slot so you can get to it. I'd go that route if this is a permanent need. Serial to USB is best for laptops and temporary use. But like I originally said, 95% of the time USB to serial works fine as long as you're ok with occasionally exiting out of an application and re-entering once in a while, and also unplugging/re-plugging in the USB cable every so often if something goes wrong. Bill
I have had to re-install drivers, reboot the computer, etc when using the USB-->serial cable on Win Vista and up.
Good point, my experience is based 100% on Linux and OpenBSD use. It's built into the kernel on both of those platforms, so you don't have to worry as much about driver compatibility, or FTDI deciding, "let's brick some devices that might be knockoffs."
Even with a new machine there is usually a serial port on the motherboard, just connect an internal serial port cable to the motherboard and pull it from the motherboard to an external slot so you can get to it.
Yep, even my quad-core AMD A10 motherboard has a COM header. Almost every industrial Mini-ITX motherboard I've bought has *at least* one, often two, up to four. Thanks, Jonathan
On Feb 5, 2016, at 4:37 PM, Systems Glitch via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Even with a new machine there is usually a serial port on the motherboard, just connect an internal serial port cable to the motherboard and pull it from the motherboard to an external slot so you can get to it.
Yep, even my quad-core AMD A10 motherboard has a COM header. Almost every industrial Mini-ITX motherboard I've bought has *at least* one, often two, up to four.
For non-industrial machines, this is increasingly less common. The main reason it's usually there is to facilitate low-level debugging; it's way easier to get simple comms over a serial port than over Ethernet, so Windows (and other OSes, but Windows is what motherboard manufacturers care about) has used serial for its low-level debug medium even in the modern day. IEEE 1394 (FireWire) is also common, because you can easily set up the most common FireWire chipset to DMA directly into and out of memory, which makes it an even better choice in some respects. I think that's probably why you see FireWire ports on a lot of motherboards, not because everyone is suddenly using it. In any case, if you don't have a good reason to have a serial port at 0x3F8 (and few do, anymore), you're probably better off going with a well-reviewed PCIe serial/parallel card. For older drivers and software that require hardware at the "vintage" addresses (like my parallel ROM burner), I've found that the PCIe devices work perfectly with a VM, where you can specify their virtual address; I run my ROM burner through VMWare and it works like a charm. The same will likely be true for USB serial devices, though USB parallel adaptors are generally pretty specific to printers and often don't actually emulate the entire parallel port. Maybe I'm assuming too much about why the desk machine needs a real serial port, though. - Dave
On 02/05/2016 04:31 PM, william degnan via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
As long as someone is prepared to support you'll be fine with whatever the person doing the support wants.
Me personally I think a real serial port is more reliable. I have had to re-install drivers, reboot the computer, etc when using the USB-->serial cable on Win Vista and up.
Even with a new machine there is usually a serial port on the motherboard, just connect an internal serial port cable to the motherboard and pull it from the motherboard to an external slot so you can get to it. I'd go that route if this is a permanent need. Serial to USB is best for laptops and temporary use.
But like I originally said, 95% of the time USB to serial works fine as long as you're ok with occasionally exiting out of an application and re-entering once in a while, and also unplugging/re-plugging in the USB cable every so often if something goes wrong.
Right now I have five USB<->serial adapters connected to my main desktop machine. Two CP2102, two PL2303, and one FTDI. They're all in heavy daily use for work. I've never once had to reboot, re-install (or install in the first place, or even be aware of) drivers, or unplug/re-plug anything. The problems you're talking about are Windows issues, not USB<->serial adapter issues. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
There are Small form factor (SFF) DC5800 by HP on site that you can have. They have sale / disposal restrictions, but you could run it until it dies and return it for disposal.
Where on site? Web search indicates some 5800s supported just 2GB RAM; others go to 8GB. Reserving the right to be slightly picky about this. :)
On 02/05/2016 01:01 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
running Windows ME.
Thus were your last three words ever typed on this list. :)
LOL! Hehe, I hated ME more than 1.0. 2.0 or 3.1 (3.11 was not bad). -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
On 02/05/2016 12:56 PM, Ethan via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Web search indicates some 5800s supported just 2GB RAM; others go to 8GB. Reserving the right to be slightly picky about this. :)
I suggest an i7 with SAS SSD running Windows ME.
ME, I hope that was humor. But along that front, why not a Raspberry Pi with Windows 10. (... runs in the other direction) -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
There are Small form factor (SFF) DC5800 by HP on site that you can have. They have sale / disposal restrictions, but you could run it until it dies and return it for disposal.
Web search indicates some 5800s supported just 2GB RAM; others go to 8GB. Reserving the right to be slightly picky about this. :) HP DC5800 SFF 60GB HDD 3.0Ghz Model AJ411AV - Support up to 16GB. Has 4GB in it at the moment, has a serial port. Has a VISTA COA, volume license key available if needed.
https://h10057.www1.hp.com/ecomcat/hpcatalog/specs/provisioner/99/AJ411AV.ht...
Burns-ian finger wiggling .... "Excellent..."
On 2/5/2016 5:43 PM, Evan Koblentz wrote:
There are Small form factor (SFF) DC5800 by HP on site that you can have. They have sale / disposal restrictions, but you could run it until it dies and return it for disposal.
Web search indicates some 5800s supported just 2GB RAM; others go to 8GB. Reserving the right to be slightly picky about this. :) HP DC5800 SFF 60GB HDD 3.0Ghz Model AJ411AV - Support up to 16GB. Has 4GB in it at the moment, has a serial port. Has a VISTA COA, volume license key available if needed.
https://h10057.www1.hp.com/ecomcat/hpcatalog/specs/provisioner/99/AJ411AV.ht...
<http://www.ebay.com/itm/321917671173> Burns-ian finger wiggling .... "Excellent..."
-----Original Message----- From: vcf-midatlantic [mailto:vcf-midatlantic- bounces@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org] On Behalf Of Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic Sent: 05 February 2016 05:26 To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> Cc: Evan Koblentz <evan@snarc.net> Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] So, we're going to need an office computer.
We're going to need a computer for the new museum's office/workbench area.
Requirements:
1. It must have a very small footprint. A full tower, anything rack-mounted, servers, etc. are not suitable for our current situation. Ideally a "mini" case (ha! a minicomputer...) would serve us well.
2. We don't need a laptop and would rather have a desktop anyhow, so we can more easily upgrade it and avoid proprietary stuff.
Conflicting requirements detected. Most small footprint cases have some level of proprietary crap.
3. Its motherboard should have a sufficient CPU and enough RAM capacity to run a modern operating system.
4. Serial port. :)
5. We'll need this in the next few weeks.
The small footprint IBM/Lenovo boxes would seem to fit Most have a couple of slots and a serial port.
That's about it. I figure we can buy a cheap SSD, install Windows 7 SP1 -- which is the least-worst version of Windows -- and make it dual-boot into Linux. I can do all of that myself, but it would certainly save time if the system gets to us already configured this way.
Sounds a good iea. Dave
participants (15)
-
Bob Flanders -
chrisjpf33＠gmail.com -
Christopher Blackmon -
Dave G4UGM -
Dave McGuire -
Dave Wade
-
David Riley -
Dean Notarnicola -
Ethan -
Evan Koblentz -
Martin A Flynn -
Neil Cherry -
Systems Glitch -
william degnan -
William Dudley