[vcf-midatlantic] So, we're going to need an office computer.

[Dave G4UGM]

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-sff/#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 at lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org] On Behalf Of William Dudley
> via vcf-midatlantic
> Sent: 05 February 2016 15:06
> To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic at lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org>
> Cc: William Dudley <wfdudley at 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.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >