Low end desktop for EE tasks?

[Joerg]

Hello Folks,

Old iron horse here starts making creaking noises and it's tired. It
only needs to do CAD, Gerber viewing, newsgroup, light SPICE sub-circuit
sims (the kind that runs in a few seconds). IOW, I am replacing the
grunt works PC.

Replacement should be <$500 sans monitor (won't give up my CRT, no way).
And absolutely no Vista which excludes most lines. Anyone's got
experiences with these lines?

Dell Vostro (desktop): Windows XP. 1GB RAM which is nice. No parallel
port which ain't very nice, and the card from the old one won't fit I
guess. Around $350.

HP Compaq DX2250: Windows XP. Has parallel port which is nice. 250MB
RAM, well, that ain't cutting it. Price seems to pop right up if you
deviate from pre-config. Otherwise around $350 as well.

 

[qrk]

Hello Folks,

Old iron horse here starts making creaking noises and it's tired. It
only needs to do CAD, Gerber viewing, newsgroup, light SPICE sub-circuit
sims (the kind that runs in a few seconds). IOW, I am replacing the
grunt works PC.

Replacement should be <$500 sans monitor (won't give up my CRT, no way).
And absolutely no Vista which excludes most lines. Anyone's got
experiences with these lines?

Dell Vostro (desktop): Windows XP. 1GB RAM which is nice. No parallel
port which ain't very nice, and the card from the old one won't fit I
guess. Around $350.

HP Compaq DX2250: Windows XP. Has parallel port which is nice. 250MB
RAM, well, that ain't cutting it. Price seems to pop right up if you
deviate from pre-config. Otherwise around $350 as well.

Are you up for building your own? You can get a mobo, cpu, memory,
hard drive, and perhaps a new power supply and, maybe, stick it in the
old case. You may need a new video card since AGP mobos are hard to
find for the modern flavors. If you need a new video board, get a dual
monitor version. Nice to have data sheets open on the secondary
monitor and CAD on the primary monitor. Mailorder from newegg.com. The
dual-core cpus are the way to go if you have programs that can use the
multiple cores.

Mark

 

[Frithiof Andreas Jensen]

Replacement should be <$500 sans monitor (won't give up my CRT, no way).
And absolutely no Vista which excludes most lines. Anyone's got
experiences with these lines?

I.M.O. Dell and Compaq are utter thrash! For USD 500 you should be able to
get a generic PC with Athlon 64X2 (dual), 1 GB RAM, 500 GB disk and a decent
graphics card.

 

[Joerg]

Are you up for building your own? You can get a mobo, cpu, memory,
hard drive, and perhaps a new power supply and, maybe, stick it in the
old case. You may need a new video card since AGP mobos are hard to
find for the modern flavors. If you need a new video board, get a dual
monitor version. Nice to have data sheets open on the secondary
monitor and CAD on the primary monitor. Mailorder from newegg.com. The
dual-core cpus are the way to go if you have programs that can use the
multiple cores.

I would do that. However, this machine is about 10 years old so not much
can be used anymore. By the time you have pieced all the parts together
and bought the required OS/SW licenses you are often already way above
the price of one of those bargain systems. I mean, $350 including the OS
and some office SW is tough to beat and at least for me such PCs always
worked right out of the box.

 

[JeffM]

Old iron horse here starts making creaking noises and it's tired
[...]IOW, I am replacing the grunt works PC.
[...]And absolutely no Vista which excludes most lines.

I haven't heard you groaning about the processing power of what you
have.
I *have* witnessed your environmental-impact awareness.
If the *drive* is what concerns you, why not clone it and replace just
that?
Less scrap hardware and
no new unknowns on drivers / OS compatability problems.

 

[Joerg]

"Joerg" <[email protected]> skrev i en meddelelse




I.M.O. Dell and Compaq are utter thrash! ...

Can't say that. My old Compaq laptop lasted 1/2 million airline miles,
then the frame began to crack. Some rather tough flight situations had
accelerated that. Six (!) hours on one charge, none of the other
manufacturers came even close. It impressed the heck out of guys next to
me on flights when their fancy ThinkPads quite after a 2-3 hours.

The two Dell laptops here purr like kittens since years, no complaints.
One has been worn down so much that you can see a valley in the touch
pad and some letters on the keyboard are nearly gone. Still going. I get
a lot of mileage out of my PCs.

... For USD 500 you should be able to
get a generic PC with Athlon 64X2 (dual), 1 GB RAM, 500 GB disk and a decent
graphics card.

With XP? Where?

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

Old iron horse here starts making creaking noises and it's tired. It
only needs to do CAD, Gerber viewing, newsgroup, light SPICE sub-circuit
sims (the kind that runs in a few seconds). IOW, I am replacing the
grunt works PC.

Replacement should be <$500 sans monitor (won't give up my CRT, no way).
And absolutely no Vista which excludes most lines. Anyone's got
experiences with these lines?

Would you consider buying used hardware? I've been using Dell
Optiplex SX260 desktops for most everything. Not the fastest on the
planet, but the price is right. About $220 to $270 with XP Home,
delivered on eBay. Add about $80 to bring it up to 1.5GBytes RAM. I
use one for antenna modeling (4NEC2 etc), RF calcs, and some
schematic/PCB work (PCB123, CadSoft Eagle, etc). Not great, but good
enough. My box is a 2.6GHz P4 (which is not the fastest), has shared
memory video (which is not the fastest), and uses a laptop 40GB hard
disk (which is not the fastest). However, despite having two fans in
the base, it makes almost no noise. Gigabit ethernet NAS and 6ea USB
2.0 ports take care of the storage. I've bought 14 of these so far,
but most of them ended up as media players and web/email utility
machines, not CAD workstations.

Docs:
<http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/opsx260/en/index.htm>

 

[Joerg]

Old iron horse here starts making creaking noises and it's tired
[...]IOW, I am replacing the grunt works PC.
[...]And absolutely no Vista which excludes most lines.

I haven't heard you groaning about the processing power of what you
have.

No, that's fine. But the mobo can take enough RAM, it's really old.
Pentium II for those who remember. Then were was the occasional bzzzt
.... pop. Spells trouble ahead.

I *have* witnessed your environmental-impact awareness.

Yeah, that is one reason why I hung onto it for 10 years ;-)

If the *drive* is what concerns you, why not clone it and replace just
that?
Less scrap hardware and
no new unknowns on drivers / OS compatability problems.

It's not the drive (that will be re-used BTW), it is the whole mobo
falling apart and not being powerful enough. And the power supply that
has hissed at me. Can't drive anything USB. And ...

 

[Joerg]

Would you consider buying used hardware? I've been using Dell
Optiplex SX260 desktops for most everything. Not the fastest on the
planet, but the price is right. About $220 to $270 with XP Home,
delivered on eBay. Add about $80 to bring it up to 1.5GBytes RAM. I
use one for antenna modeling (4NEC2 etc), RF calcs, and some
schematic/PCB work (PCB123, CadSoft Eagle, etc). Not great, but good
enough. My box is a 2.6GHz P4 (which is not the fastest), has shared
memory video (which is not the fastest), and uses a laptop 40GB hard
disk (which is not the fastest). However, despite having two fans in
the base, it makes almost no noise. Gigabit ethernet NAS and 6ea USB
2.0 ports take care of the storage. I've bought 14 of these so far,
but most of them ended up as media players and web/email utility
machines, not CAD workstations.

Docs:
<http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/opsx260/en/index.htm>

Hmm, the first desktop I've seen that has an external power brick.
Interesting. yes, I've considered used. But with that extra RAM it's
almost as much as a new desktop and that one I don't have to scrub ;-)

 

[[email protected]]

Would you consider buying used hardware? I've been using Dell
Optiplex SX260 desktops for most everything. Not the fastest on the
planet, but the price is right. About $220 to $270 with XP Home,
delivered on eBay. Add about $80 to bring it up to 1.5GBytes RAM. I
use one for antenna modeling (4NEC2 etc), RF calcs, and some
schematic/PCB work (PCB123, CadSoft Eagle, etc). Not great, but good
enough. My box is a 2.6GHz P4 (which is not the fastest), has shared
memory video (which is not the fastest), and uses a laptop 40GB hard
disk (which is not the fastest). However, despite having two fans in
the base, it makes almost no noise. Gigabit ethernet NAS and 6ea USB
2.0 ports take care of the storage. I've bought 14 of these so far,
but most of them ended up as media players and web/email utility
machines, not CAD workstations.

Docs:
<http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/opsx260/en/index.htm>

--
Jeff Liebermann [email protected]
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

There's Craigslist, too - a little less risky than eBay.

Joerg, try this search:
http://sacramento.craigslist.org/search/sys?query=desktop&minAsk=&maxAsk=250

Regards,

Michael

 

[Nico Coesel]

"Frithiof Andreas Jensen"

I.M.O. Dell and Compaq are utter thrash! For USD 500 you should be able to
get a generic PC with Athlon 64X2 (dual), 1 GB RAM, 500 GB disk and a decent
graphics card.

And a crash every hour. There is a reason why Dell and Compaq are more
expensive: quality! At work they bought 5 Acer PC's (against my
recommendation). It took 3/4 day (average) for each machine to get it
up and running and Acer had to come over 4 times to fix 2 machines.

 

[[email protected]]

"Frithiof Andreas Jensen"




And a crash every hour. There is a reason why Dell and Compaq are more
expensive: quality! At work they bought 5 Acer PC's (against my
recommendation). It took 3/4 day (average) for each machine to get it
up and running and Acer had to come over 4 times to fix 2 machines.

A properly assembled system, with silver thermal paste on the CPU,
should have no problems.

I bought an HP (Compaq now?) several years ago, and was disappointed
there was no AGP slot, even. In comes an Asus P4S800-MX board. With
Arctic Silver Thermal Paste, it was even stable with overclocking.

Got Asus? ;-)

Michael

 

[Rich Grise]

Hello Folks,

Old iron horse here starts making creaking noises and it's tired. It only
needs to do CAD, Gerber viewing, newsgroup, light SPICE sub-circuit sims
(the kind that runs in a few seconds). IOW, I am replacing the grunt works
PC.

Replacement should be <$500 sans monitor (won't give up my CRT, no way).
And absolutely no Vista which excludes most lines. Anyone's got
experiences with these lines?

Dell Vostro (desktop): Windows XP. 1GB RAM which is nice. No parallel port
which ain't very nice, and the card from the old one won't fit I guess.
Around $350.

HP Compaq DX2250: Windows XP. Has parallel port which is nice. 250MB RAM,
well, that ain't cutting it. Price seems to pop right up if you deviate
from pre-config. Otherwise around $350 as well.

Have Fry's build you one to your spec.
http://www.outpost.com

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Joerg]

Have Fry's build you one to your spec.
http://www.outpost.com

Oh no, definitely not. Seen too much DOA stuff.

 

[Joerg]

And a crash every hour. There is a reason why Dell and Compaq are more
expensive: quality! At work they bought 5 Acer PC's (against my
recommendation). It took 3/4 day (average) for each machine to get it
up and running and Acer had to come over 4 times to fix 2 machines.

Dell gets dissed a lot but I must say that I never had a failure in the
more than five years I use Dell PCs. Not one. Not even a burp.

 

[Joerg]

There's Craigslist, too - a little less risky than eBay.

Joerg, try this search:
http://sacramento.craigslist.org/search/sys?query=desktop&minAsk=&maxAsk=250

Well yeah, I can get a Pentium II with 96MB RAM for $75 right here in
Cameron Park. That's what I've got right now and I don't need another
one of those ;-)

I wonder how he crammed XP into that old thing. The others in the list
are also quite antiquated.

Looks like it might be the Dell Vostro then.

 

[[email protected]]

Well yeah, I can get a Pentium II with 96MB RAM for $75 right here in
Cameron Park. That's what I've got right now and I don't need another
one of those ;-)

I wonder how he crammed XP into that old thing. The others in the list
are also quite antiquated.

Looks like it might be the Dell Vostro then.

Another reason why not to go (too) used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

A computer tech here at work complained that the Dell desktops aren't
that great. (The laptops are good, he says.) He's had to replace WAY
too many motherboards and Western Digital hard drives on our Dell
Optiplex SX280s.

Our policy at work is, Save your work to the Network Drive (file
server, backed up nightly), not to your C: drive !

Michael

 

[John Larkin]

Hello Folks,

Old iron horse here starts making creaking noises and it's tired. It
only needs to do CAD, Gerber viewing, newsgroup, light SPICE sub-circuit
sims (the kind that runs in a few seconds). IOW, I am replacing the
grunt works PC.

Replacement should be <$500 sans monitor (won't give up my CRT, no way).
And absolutely no Vista which excludes most lines. Anyone's got
experiences with these lines?

Dell Vostro (desktop): Windows XP. 1GB RAM which is nice. No parallel
port which ain't very nice, and the card from the old one won't fit I
guess. Around $350.

HP Compaq DX2250: Windows XP. Has parallel port which is nice. 250MB
RAM, well, that ain't cutting it. Price seems to pop right up if you
deviate from pre-config. Otherwise around $350 as well.

Why go cheap? Your time to hassle with cheap crap isn't worth the
savings.

And LCD monitors rock!

The last few Dells I've bought have been increasing garbage; never
again.

John

 

[Joerg]

Another reason why not to go (too) used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

A computer tech here at work complained that the Dell desktops aren't
that great. (The laptops are good, he says.) He's had to replace WAY
too many motherboards and Western Digital hard drives on our Dell
Optiplex SX280s.

Hmm, the Dells here are laptops. But I've seen really old and beat up
desktops at clients, chugging along nicely.

Our policy at work is, Save your work to the Network Drive (file
server, backed up nightly), not to your C: drive !

Same here. Best is to do both.

 

[Joerg]

Why go cheap? Your time to hassle with cheap crap isn't worth the
savings.

Never had any troubles with PCs. Unless they got really, really old and
banged around a lot. Ok, this one is slowly going but it has been
through a lot and it gave me 10 years of reliable service. Not bad.

And LCD monitors rock!

Somehow my eyes can't get used to them. A few hours of Gerber reviewing
and they hurt. Not with the large Trinitron tube here.

The last few Dells I've bought have been increasing garbage; never
again.

I remember the story when you went to HP. But that was a different
category, full blown servers AFAIR. I really don't need that for this
desk. In the lab that's different but there I've got a fast laptop which
works nicely.