Maker Pro
Maker Pro

Low end desktop for EE tasks?

J

Joerg

RST said:
Yes they do, Jim. But they are just like any other professional that has
been schooled one way. Ask a PhD digital engineer how to design a device
that will keep the headlights on for 30 seconds after you turn the ignition
off and (s)he will tell you how to program a microcontroller for a precise
delay time of 30 seconds. You and I would take an RC time constant into a
fet and call it good. Depends on your skill set.

Nah, use a CD4060. That obsoletes the expensive and failure prone
electrolytic or <gasp> tantalum.
 
J

Jim Thompson

Yes they do, Jim. But they are just like any other professional that has
been schooled one way. Ask a PhD digital engineer how to design a device
that will keep the headlights on for 30 seconds after you turn the ignition
off and (s)he will tell you how to program a microcontroller for a precise
delay time of 30 seconds. You and I would take an RC time constant into a
fet and call it good. Depends on your skill set.

Jim

I think doctors have been so burned by litigation that they're afraid
to make a decision not based on test, test, test...

...Jim Thompson
 
J

John Larkin

Nah, use a CD4060. That obsoletes the expensive and failure prone
electrolytic or <gasp> tantalum.

Tantalums are great if you never push a lot of pulse current into
them. Aluminums eventually dry out.

John
 
S

Spehro Pefhany

Tantalums are great if you never push a lot of pulse current into
them. Aluminums eventually dry out.

John

Cars wear out pretty fast.If there's a penny savings the manufacturer
might well pick the low leakage aluminum.

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
 
J

Joerg

John said:
Tantalums are great if you never push a lot of pulse current into
them. Aluminums eventually dry out.

True. In a timer they can be useful but they are expensive. Also not
very suitable if the timing needs to be better than 25% or so.
 
J

Joerg

Spehro said:
Cars wear out pretty fast.If there's a penny savings the manufacturer
might well pick the low leakage aluminum.

Had an article in our local paper today. It stated exactly that attitude
as the main cause for GM's poor sales.

The trick is to find a solution that doesn't cost more but is of higher
quality. A dome light not turning off may seem innocent but can be a
major inconvenience if you return to your car at the airport parking lot
late at night after a 10 day biz trip. Turn the key, click, silence ...
expletive.
 
S

Spehro Pefhany

Had an article in our local paper today. It stated exactly that attitude
as the main cause for GM's poor sales.

The trick is to find a solution that doesn't cost more but is of higher
quality. A dome light not turning off may seem innocent but can be a
major inconvenience if you return to your car at the airport parking lot
late at night after a 10 day biz trip. Turn the key, click, silence ...
expletive.

IME, usually the optimal solution costs a bit more than the absolute
cheapest solution that meets the specs.

I find it useful to have a feel for d(value)/d$. As consumers, we make
that kind of decision all the time when we decide to spend another $40
for a HDD that's 50% bigger, but to eschew the extended warranty or
whatever.

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
 
K

Ken Fowler

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From: John Larkin <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Low end desktop for EE tasks?
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:18:28 -0700
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If my HP dies, I can grab a spare, identical machine from the storage
cubicle, plug in a front-panel hot-plug RAID c: drive from the dead
machine, and be back up in minutes. Most of that time will be spent
under the table groveling with cables. If the OS dies and I can't
boot, I can plug in a c: image drive, stored in a baggie, and mount
the old c: as d: to get its files, or use my daily files-only d:
backup drive and get most of what I need.

Only the paranoid survive.

John

Two weeks ago, I had the crash from hell on one of my home machines. It had halted a couple of
times for no reason and I had the side cover off. Pressed the ON button and saw a puff of smoke
from the Power Supply. Found burned up components in the supply. Replaced the supply but no
startup. Voltages all OK, MB obviously bad. Bought a used replacement MB and installed. No drives
attached and only the video card installed, MB starts up, finds Keyboard, and goes to Setup.
Attached HDD and started up but BIOS doesn't detect HDD or CDR. Installed second hard drive which
is detected OK. Diskette drive is detected so use Windows XP Startup diskette to boot. FDISK and
Format new HDD OK. Prepare to re-install Windows. Have to install W98 first from CD to install XP
upgrade. BIOS only detects one of the CD drives so Windows CD in. Drive won't read anything.
Installed another CD Drive which is detected and get W98 installed. Then the usual re-installation
process for OS and programs. Took about 10 days. Fortunately, no business loss here. I'm retired.

The moral is that at any time, a simple Power Supply failure can wipe out everything. I lost MB,
HDD, CDR, DVD, and even USB Wireless Adapter. And yes, the power supply was not crap and had been
working for seven years. Good Luck to All.

Ken Fowler
 
J

Joerg

Spehro said:
IME, usually the optimal solution costs a bit more than the absolute
cheapest solution that meets the specs.

I find it useful to have a feel for d(value)/d$. As consumers, we make
that kind of decision all the time when we decide to spend another $40
for a HDD that's 50% bigger, but to eschew the extended warranty or
whatever.

I take a close look at the extended warranty without buying it. The cost
per year is a pretty clear indicator for the level of confidence the
manufacturers have in their own products. One reason we don't have a
flat screen TV yet.
 
J

JeffM

Ken said:
Have to install W98 first from CD to install XP upgrade.

The word I got was that this is unnecessary.
All you need to do is present the 98 install media for inspection
before proceeding.

You seem to have cleared your *linebreak at ~72 characters*
setting in your newsreader.

....and you sure do leave A LOT of "context" when you "bottom-post".
 
J

Jim Thompson

Two weeks ago, I had the crash from hell on one of my home machines. It had halted a couple of
times for no reason and I had the side cover off. Pressed the ON button and saw a puff of smoke
from the Power Supply. Found burned up components in the supply. Replaced the supply but no
startup. Voltages all OK, MB obviously bad. Bought a used replacement MB and installed. No drives
attached and only the video card installed, MB starts up, finds Keyboard, and goes to Setup.
Attached HDD and started up but BIOS doesn't detect HDD or CDR. Installed second hard drive which
is detected OK. Diskette drive is detected so use Windows XP Startup diskette to boot. FDISK and
Format new HDD OK. Prepare to re-install Windows. Have to install W98 first from CD to install XP
upgrade. BIOS only detects one of the CD drives so Windows CD in. Drive won't read anything.
Installed another CD Drive which is detected and get W98 installed. Then the usual re-installation
process for OS and programs. Took about 10 days. Fortunately, no business loss here. I'm retired.

The moral is that at any time, a simple Power Supply failure can wipe out everything. I lost MB,
HDD, CDR, DVD, and even USB Wireless Adapter. And yes, the power supply was not crap and had been
working for seven years. Good Luck to All.

Ken Fowler

I had one of those where +5V went up to +12V... lots of curly smoke...
killed HDD _and_ MB :-(

...Jim Thompson
 
R

RST Engineering \(jw\)

For general purpose office work, a mouse is fine. However, once you've done
layouts and such using a wireless trackball, you'll never use another mouse
in your life.

Jim
 
J

Joerg

RST said:
For general purpose office work, a mouse is fine. However, once you've done
layouts and such using a wireless trackball, you'll never use another mouse
in your life.

Yes. Earlier this year I had to do a large design and was looking for a
trackball because mine didn't work with those "new" lower RS232 voltage
levels. This old disintegrating PC here is fine for Gerber views and
stuff but not for real CAD, and the other PCs have LV-RS232. Couldn't
find any trackballs that fit my paws so I got a Logitech wireless mouse.
Pretty nice.

I'll see if that new Dell will accept my old RS232/LPT card (I sure hope
so...) and then my old Trackman will be back. Yeehaw!

That first-edition grandpa of all trackballs was the best because you
can keep the fingers spread apart. Most new ones require some clutching.
It's like with cars where I never understand why the pedals on new ones
are so close. With shoe size 13 and hiking boots that's a problem.
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Joerg said:
But it's a client. Leaving the dungeon would almost be like a heart
surgeon walking away from the patient.


You can take a break and get a little fresh air without the warden
finding out. :)

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Jim said:
I think doctors have been so burned by litigation that they're afraid
to make a decision not based on test, test, test...


The problem is that we have lawyers and politicians practicing
medicine, instead of doctors.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
 
J

Joerg

Michael said:
The problem is that we have lawyers and politicians practicing
medicine, instead of doctors.

Make that lawyers, politicians and bean counters.
 
J

Jeff Liebermann

I can't imagine working at a place where *engineers* weren't allowed control
of their own PCs.

Sorry. I forgot we were talking about engineers as users. That's
quite different as operating and configuring computers is part of
their tool kit, and not just an office appliance. I have only a few
technically qualified customers. However, even those have machines
that are at least partially locked down allegedly to prevent security
problems, but really to keep the engineering from wasting company time
tinkering with their computers. I had one architect proudly proclaim
that he trashed an entire day fixing a computer problem, that I could
have fixed in 10 minutes. Yeah, I would trust them to control,
configure, and eventually trash their machines, but the boss that pays
their salaries isn't quite so trusting. I've also preformed far too
many system rescue operations precipitated by very competent
individuals doing incredibly stupid things with computers.

Question: Do you know of any intelligent engineer, who cannot resist
installing every utility program he finds on the internet? I don't
and have spent far too much time undoing the damage.

Incidentally, there are really smart ones, that use a Linux boot disk
to mount NTFS partitions, hack whatever they please, tweak the
registry, and then cover their tracks. I leave them alone.
If I can't trust someone to not screw up their own machine
on a regular basis or at least be able to fix it when they do, why in the
world would I let them start playing with $80k network analyzers where you can
blow up the front end with static if you're not careful?

I only have one customer that has an engineering lab full of test
equipment. They have two types of computers. One group is strictly
for use within the lab and does NOT connect to the corporate LAN. The
engineers and techs can do what they please with these. Just don't
call IT for help when you trash these. Most of these are used for
data collection and instrument control. There is a connection to the
internet, but it's completely independent of the corporate gateway.

The other class of machines are connected to the corporate LAN and are
locked down just like all the other desktops in the company. Only IT
gets to play with those. Incidentally, most of IT is outsourced to
some company in India, which creates some interesting problems.
Or high-powered
lasers or industrial robots or other devices that can cause very significant
damage if not used properly? I can't imagine letting anyone who isn't trusted
with a PC ever pick up a plasma cutting torch... aieee!

They're very different skills, but I see your point. Competence in
one area of expertise automatically qualifies that person to be
competent in computing. I don't think so. I know some people that
are very competent in their areas of expertise, that are an absolute
disaster in front of a PC. Show me some PC expertise and experience,
and I might allow them to perhaps format a floppy, or something
equally trivial.
But regarding the topic at hand... On PCs, backing up data is easy. Short of
doing a full disk image, though, do you know of any good program that'll back
up installed applications as well?

No. The problem is synchronizing the changes in the Program Files
directory, the well hidden crap under \Docs&Sets\User_name\Local
Settings, \Docs&Sets\User_name\Applications Data, the registry, and
perhaps stuff in My Docs. Windoze apps just spray garbage all over
the place. If they only had one section used in the registry, it
might be possible. However, some applications have literally
thousands of entries that have to be backed up. Applying them to the
registry on a different machine always causes problems. I make good
money recovering from the mess created by so called applications
"movers" that try to do that. The only safe way to move an
application is with a reinstall, followed by a data file transplant.

If you feel like gambling, you can try just backing up just the data
files, and hope that you haven't missed anything. A dry run to a new
machine would test for any problems, but nobody has time to do that
with all the machine and applications. In my never humble opinion,
the only thing that works EVERY time, is an image backup. It's not a
horrible as it sounds. I was doing one on my office machine last
night while I was cleaning a laptop that had filled full of dust (from
Burning Man) and left to ossify. Using Norton Ghost 2003, 30GBytes of
live data to 6ea DVD+R on a 16x burner took about 4 hours elapsed
time. If I had been paying attention when it asked for a DVD change,
I think it would been done in about 2hrs. At 25cents per DVD, that's
$1.50 per backup. Incidentally, I've done restores this way and they
take about twice as long as the original backup. Also, my office
backups are stored at home, and my home backups are stored in the
office.
 
J

Jeff Liebermann

[email protected] hath wroth:
Our IT is in charge of restoring all programs too. So it's just
data.

Ok, just make sure you backup ALL the data. The only way to test that
is to do a dry run on a new machine. If you're paranoid, you might
want to convince IT that it's time for a fire drill. For what it's
worth, I've done that a few times at several of my customers, with not
very good results. There's ALWAYS something that just doesn't seem to
get backed up. For example, the Quickbooks data backup and restore I
previously mentioned successfully restored the data and the company
settings, but not the program preferences and appearance. There are
also chronic problems with open files not being backed up. It's
repeated failures to restore from data only and incremental backups
that inspired me to use image backups. However, the real reason was
speed. Image backups and restores are considerably faster than file
by file. Much less HD head motion involved. Time to recovery is
important.
I don't trust DVD backups. Maybe I was using the wrong media at the
time though: DVD-RW. Since then I know to use DVD+RW

I know where that came from. There was an article several years ago
allegedly by an IBM researcher proclaiming that DVD's were not
suitable for archival storage because of the limited lifetime of the
dyes involved. I won't go into the merits of the claims, but the
result has been some rather inflated claims of extended lifetime and
"archival quality" media, with correspondingly inflated prices. I've
done my own UV fade testing and found that I could kill a DVD+R if I
left it in the sun (on my office roof) for about 3 months. The DVD-R
and DVD+RW disks went for 5 months before I gave up (when the HVAC
repairman threw away my test disks). Anyway, find a better excuse to
not do backups.
 
J

Joel Kolstad

Hi Jeff,

Jeff Liebermann said:
Sorry. I forgot we were talking about engineers as users. That's
quite different as operating and configuring computers is part of
their tool kit, and not just an office appliance.

Not only operating and configuring, but also programming in many cases. It
does depend on the particular user, of course.
However, even those have machines
that are at least partially locked down allegedly to prevent security
problems, but really to keep the engineering from wasting company time
tinkering with their computers.

Understood, and that's not a particularly unreasonable policy, although I
would point out that -- at least with good engineers -- the line between
"wasting time" and "research that might eventually turn into a profitable
product" is often blurry. Historically, many of the best circuits came out of
some engineer goofing around with some particular part of topology he wanted
to understand better, and with software the canonical example is Google where
*company policy* is that you're *supposed* to spend some certain percentage of
your paid work time working on "things that interest *you*" and they figure
that every now and again one of them will turn into something that makes money
for the company.

I think I've related before how I worked at one big company where the IT
policy was... your user account was just a "power user" or similar to start,
and if you wanted to be an admin, just call up IT can give them a credible
explanation of why you need to be one and -- poof! -- you're it. Took no more
than two minutes in my case. The deal was that once you're an admin, you were
agreeing that you were "self supporting" as far as maintaining your PC goes
and that IT's only responsibility if you thoroughly hose your machine's
configuration was to restore it to the stock configuration they had imaged on
a hard drive somewhere. That was a reasonable policy that respected the
legitimate need of some engineers to completely control their own PCs while
making sure that the "casual tweaker" wouldn't immediately shoot himself in
the foot.

Where I am now, everyone (well, all the engineers at least) has two
accounts -- a "power user" account and an "admin" account. The idea is that
you generally spend your day logged on as a power user, and then use "run as"
or similar tools to give yourself admin access when needed... or just log out
and back on with your admin account if you need to have extensive needs. This
too balances security with recognizing the legitimate admin needs of
engineers. (And so far I only know one engineer who just changed his power
user account into an admin account as well :), but that really was because he
had a lot of problems with certain software that didn't work with the power
user account and -- unlike me -- didn't feel like "goofing off" and creating
scripts to just run specific programs as an admin! :) )
I had one architect proudly proclaim
that he trashed an entire day fixing a computer problem, that I could
have fixed in 10 minutes.

Sure, but he presumably learned a lot about his PC in that day, don't you
think? Whether or not that's worthwhile is of course up to the guy paying his
paycheck, of course.

In one of the books I have (possibly Jim William's one on analog techniques)
there's an anecdote about how the protagonist gets a job in charge of an
electronics lab. He submits a budget to his superior, which is completely
approved except for one item: A request for so-many dollars for out-of-house
equipment repair. "No," the boss says, "everything that breaks -- including
what you inadvertently blow up yourself -- will be fixed by you." Although
he's annoyed at the time, over the course of years he recognizes that it
forces him to sit down and analyze a lot of designs from which he learns and
thereby becomes a much better designer himself. So while in the short term
the company ends up having him "waste time" spending days fixing designs that
could have been repaired out of house for far less, in the long term they end
up with a much more capable and hence valuable employee.

Of course, in today's world such long-term thinking is somewhat uncommon.
Question: Do you know of any intelligent engineer, who cannot resist
installing every utility program he finds on the internet? I don't
and have spent far too much time undoing the damage.

Sure, plenty of people around here. I have very few such "utility" programs
on my PC, and I'm willing to bet that folks like Joerg, Jim, and John do
likewise.
Incidentally, there are really smart ones, that use a Linux boot disk
to mount NTFS partitions, hack whatever they please, tweak the
registry, and then cover their tracks. I leave them alone.

Talk about wasting the company's time... :)
I only have one customer that has an engineering lab full of test
equipment. They have two types of computers. One group is strictly
for use within the lab and does NOT connect to the corporate LAN. The
engineers and techs can do what they please with these. Just don't
call IT for help when you trash these. Most of these are used for
data collection and instrument control. There is a connection to the
internet, but it's completely independent of the corporate gateway.

Sounds reasonable enough, but how do they transfer "results" data back to the
corporate network? E-mail themselves? USB thumb drives? Where I am the lab
machines have highly-controlled access to the main fileservers, getting to
read and write only in a couple of places -- but this is a lot more productive
than having to copy 10MB report files to a thumb drive!
They're very different skills, but I see your point. Competence in
one area of expertise automatically qualifies that person to be
competent in computing. I don't think so.

I guess I just don't see myself ever hiring people who profess competence in
one area but somehow aren't even competent enough to know their own
limitations when it comes to another area such as PCs.

Thanks for your advice regarding backup up PCs.

---Joel
 
J

JosephKK

Ecnerwal [email protected] posted to
sci.electronics.design:
I bought 7 MyBooks (USB/FIrewire version) this fall. 3 smoked
(literally) as soon as they were plugged in. I'm not impressed.

I would have said that a bit differently, more like "i was very
impressed, negatively"
 
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