Re: Low end desktop for EE tasks?

On Sep 25, 1:33 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
mrdarr...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Sep 25, 12:05 pm, Jeff Liebermann <je...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Joerg <notthisjoerg...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> hath wroth:

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>

--
Jeff Liebermann je...@xxxxxxxxxx
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=&max...

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.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com


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

.