OT: where to source cheap used desktop PCs?

[OG]

What are you talking about?

usage 90W

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. Faced with the demise of my server I bit the bullet and went for an Intel ATOM based machine and a pair of 500gig drives..

At a shade over £200 it will pay for itself in 4 years on reduced electricity costs alone..

So my advice is to buy a new case, disks RAM and motherboard, and use whatever keyboards and screens you can find.

I also found that for legacy windows Apps, a virtual machine on a faster modern computer is a better performing brute than a native but old power guzzling machine.

And it keeps the clutter off the desktop.

[John Rumm]

95 OSR 2.1 actually added USB support... but agreed in principle 98 is a better bet for USB support in general.

[Simon Finnigan]

My laptop charger kicks out 120W max.

[Simon Finnigan]

costs alone..

guzzling machine.

I've ended up with one of the HP micro servers, I reckon it'll pay for itself within a couple of years compared to the server it's replaced.

[Andy Champ]

>> Power usage 90W

while 12mW seems rather low, the _charger_ peak power will be higher than the consumption. It's charging the battery after all! I can't find how much it would use when running, but I'd guess as 20W or so.

Andy

[OG]

electricity costs alone..

guzzling machine.

depends on how much you paid for it; and whether you're on a diesel powered genny

[John Rumm]

>> Power usage 90W

Maximum power capacity - not the same as nominal usage.

You would be using less than half that during normal operation.

[Windmill]

Could well be. Knowing zilch about Windows means that I don't know what to expect.

The printing on the CD says it is '95 with USB support' so maybe it's an update as you suggest.

As to HDDs, I was thinking of using an old 20Gb disk (!).

I've just noticed that there are things like gEDA and KiCAD which apparently handle schematic and PCB generation on Linux, so possibly, if they're any good, I won't need to go the QuickRoute.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

QuickRoute will be pretty out of date given the changes to our road systems.

Why not just use Google maps and directions?

[NT]

I didnt know that. How well does it do it? Unpatched 98 does it pretty badly, and I dont know if nusb3.1 works on 95.

NT

[John Rumm]

Fairly poorly - much depends on the actual peripheral, some worked better than others.

The number of stages involved in identifying and mounting USB devices has grown quite a bit over the years to try and deal with all the foibles of various kit that has different interpretation of the protocols.

A nice explanation here:

Unpatched 98 does it pretty

I doubt USB2 works on 95...

[Adrian C]

Guess the relevant 'directions' are turn left by IC33, gyrate through L1/C1/IC32, smooth along C1/C2/C4 and diminish at R4 (5W 1%)....

[Andy Burns]

[tim....]

[charles]

[Jethro]

Had a look ... I wonder if anywhere sells machines *without* XP Pro ?

[Simon Finnigan]

About £125 in total for the hardware delivered, it runs on about 40-50 w with hard drives and CPU flat out. The processor on the server it replaced could burn through 80 W on it's own, never mind the rest of the hardware. It's on 24/7, saving about 50W I reckon. 50x24=1200W per day = 438,000 w per year. 438 KWh at 12p each is roughly £50 a year saving on electricity.

Plus they're newer, smaller, much quieter etc, so all in all a good deal :-)

[Andrew May]

Has anyone tried one of these? Consume 6-8W when running and less than a Watt on standby. I keep trying to find an application for one.

[Simon Finnigan]

The micro server? It's up to transcoding HD video for my xbox anyway :-)