On 06/23/2012 01:12 PM, Stuart Henderson wrote: > On 2012/06/23 11:02, Ben Calvert wrote: >> Optiplexes have a reputation for spontaneously letting the magic smoke out of their own power supply capacitors. hard to recommend unless you have a good support deal with dell > > Knowing which way round to hold a soldering iron is a useful skill > if you're dealing with cheap hardware :) > > >
While on the subject of cheap hardware........ My test lab is made of a bunch of Wyse 941GXLs I bought on Ebay. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wyse-Terminals-Lot-of-5-FREE-SHIPPING-/120922782473?p t=US_Thin_Clients&hash=item1c278f3b09 Mine specifically have Via C3 1Ghz CPUs (i386 only) with 256MB RAM (with an empty DIMM slot) and I use IDE to CF adapters like these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Compact-Flash-CF-to-3-5-Female-40-Pin-IDE-Bootable-Ad apter-Converter-Card-/120937687353?pt=US_Drive_Cables_dapters&hash=item1c2872 a939 ... (with CF cards, of course) for the boot disks. The cards are kind of a tight fit, but you can still add a half-length PCI card to the units, and I have mine populated with these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Intel-PRO-100-Dual-Port-Server-Adapter-9213P-/20 0739620019?pt=US_Internal_Network_Cards&hash=item2ebd0384b3 I haven't had any issues out of any of them, running at times for weeks on end doing various tasks. They're also silent :) I spent about $100 on each of them a while back, and prices look to have come down a good bit since then. A very good purchase, in my opinion. ---- I don't really think these fit your needs very well, but thought I'd throw these out there while the subject was on cheap hardware. *I'd personally look at* some of the more current and powerful Mini-ITX stuff. You can even get LGA1155 Mini-ITX boards nowdays, with i7 processor support for around $75 (Intel BOXDH61DLB3, for example) and add whatever components you want to it. If you're on a budget, a Celeron G530 should work and would kill an Atom or E-350 at any task. Thank you, -- James Shupe [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]
