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adacomputer [2009/10/20 23:55]
ladyada
adacomputer [2016/01/28 18:05]
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-====== Ada-kompute! ====== 
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-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. This computer is for electronics hacking, and its also for business. Yeek! We got two of these, one as a personal workstation for all the web, graphics, programming,​ etc. And another one as the '​business'​ machine - for shipping, programming chips, etc. 
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-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 and quiet**, we dont got a lot of room here at adafruit. And nothing is worse than fan noise. 
-  - **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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-Of course you should recycle what you can. In this case we had already recycled all our hard drives, CD rom drives, etc into other machines! 
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-If you have some other suggestions,​ feel free to edit the wiki page. Thanks! 
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-====== What we got ====== 
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-{{:​stuff.jpg|}} 
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-===== Case $200 ===== 
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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 $40-$150 ===== 
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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 $40/2GB ===== 
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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 $30 ===== 
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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 $50 ===== 
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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 $0 ===== 
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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 $20 ===== 
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-Theres a single PCI card slot, which we used for a Wi-Fi 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 $10 ===== 
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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) $10 each ===== 
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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|}} 
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-===== Total! ===== 
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-Personal machine: $200 + $150 + $80 + $30 + $50 + $20 + $10 + $20 = $560 - Nicer processor & 4 G RAM & wifi 
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-Business machine: $200 + $40 + $40 + $30 + $50 + $10 + $20 = $390 - Cheap processor & 2 G RAM & no wifi 
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-Which means that we met the budget of $500 (averaged together) 
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-I rounded up because I didnt include shipping. The keyboards and monitors were recycled. ​ 
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-We've been happy with this set up, hopefully it will be useful for someone :) 
  
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