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adacomputer [2009/10/20 22:35] ladyada |
adacomputer [2016/01/28 18:05] |
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- | ====== Ada-kompute! ====== | ||
- | For my work, hobby and business, I need COMPUTING POWER! However, my needs are kinda picky and it took me many days to narrow down the 'ideal' hacking computer. Here is what my specifications were | ||
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- | - **Must have hardware/motherboard parallel port (printer port).** Parallel ports are the pinkie toe of electronics hacking. Youd think they'd be gone by now but nooo, they're still there, hanging around and often necessary for using older software/hardware/schems. I use them a lot for talking to laser and label printers, CPLD/FPGA programmers, bitbanging all sorts of stuff, programming chips via PonyProg, etc.. USB-parallel converters aren't good enough due to the slowness from the USB layer. Hardware parallel ports are just damn handy! | ||
- | - **Must have hardware/motherboard serial port** (COM/Modem port). Two if you can. These are more common than parallel ports. You can use USB-serial ports for most things but sometimes you need the hardware speed of an onboard serial port especially if you're doing some funky bitbanging. | ||
- | - **Should be small**, we dont got a lot of room here at adafruit. | ||
- | - **Doesnt need hardcore video** Not a lot of game playing around here, mostly working! | ||
- | - **Processor type** Can be Intel or AMD. Both are fine by us. Lately we've liked AMD a lot. | ||
- | - **Lots of USB ports.** Both on the outside and on the motherboard. Especially for the shipping computer theres just tons of stuff that needs to plug in - programmers, barcode scanners, scales, backup usb keys, Arduinos. You can also use hubs. | ||
- | - **Whole machine for <$500 ** Not including monitor, key/mouse, etc. We wanted it lean and clean. | ||
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- | ====== What we got ====== | ||
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- | ===== Case ===== | ||
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- | We like small desktop computers so we went with the Shuttle brand for a machine. We tend to build up machines ourselves since its often cheaper and better to do it this way. | ||
- | Looking through the AMD processor machines we found only a few with both serial and parallel (from our notes we wrote down SA76G2, SK22G2, SN21G5, SS21G, SS21T). For Intel machines you'll have to scour the Shuttle website. | ||
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- | It seemed like the SA76G2 was the model that was currently available, and not too expensive ($200 for motherboard/case/powersuppy). It comes with VGA, DVI, Ethernet, PS2, USB, 2 serial and a parallel port. This is great because we have onboard networking, video, and the ports we like. | ||
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- | {{:shuttlefront.gif|}} {{:shuttleback.gif|}} | ||
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- | ===== Processor ===== | ||
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- | For the processor we actually went with two options. One was the "AMD Phenom II X4 810 2.6GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 4MB L3 Cache Socket AM3" ($150, this was for my personal workstation) and the other was the "AMD Sempron 140 Sargas 2.7GHz 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM3 45W" ($40, for the shipping/programming workstation). The shuttle cant power more than 95W so dont try to overdo it or you will get heat problems! | ||
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- | ===== RAM ===== | ||
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- | RAM is RAM in our opinion, you need 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM PC2 6400. Since windows XP 32 cant recognize more than 4 G I just got 4G for the personal workstation and 2G for the shipping/programming workstation. | ||
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- | ===== CD/DVD ===== | ||
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- | I rarely burn discs, so I just got a DVD-ROM for installing software. eh. | ||
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- | ===== Hard drive ===== | ||
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- | You can go with SATA or IDE. Since everything else here is IDE, we went with 160GB IDE drives. | ||
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- | ===== Video card ===== | ||
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- | None! The onboard video was perfect. Theres a video slot but we actually used that for the serial port bracket | ||
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- | ===== Networking ===== | ||
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- | Theres a single PCI card slot, which we used for a WiFi card on the personal workstation. The business machine ended up connected to the ethernet drop so that was fine. | ||
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- | ===== Parallel port ===== | ||
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- | The computer has parallel on board, and theres a punchout on the case, but you'll need a [[http://eu.shuttle.com/en/DesktopDefault.aspx/tabid-123/241_read-1655/|PC8]] parallel port adapter cable which has a 2mm header (NOT 0.1" IDC!) | ||
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- | {{:ps8.jpg|}} | ||
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- | {{:parallel.jpg|}} | ||
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- | ===== Serial port(s) ===== | ||
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- | The computer has 2 serial ports on board (COM1 and COM2). Unfortunately theres no punchout so you'll want a bracket. They're called "Serial Port Brackets" and come with a 10-pin IDC cable | ||
- | {{:09480a.jpg|}} | ||
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- | If you're feeling adventurous, you can actually get two of these and a Keystone 9200-15 (double DB-9 bracket) and double up for both COM ports! | ||
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- | {{:serial2.jpg|}} |