Computer in the shop

[Rick Cox]

I am a long time wreck lurker. and a recent post by Jim Laumann "A 'puter in the shop" got me thinking.

In 1994 when I purchased my first house I wanted to buy a RAS to help with some of the fix ups needed. My father who lived close by talked me into getting a tablesaw because he already had a ras and said it would be nice to have both between us. So it was off to the local sears and I purchased a contractors table saw. I purchased the saw for $449.00 and I could not believe that I spent that much on something I didn't event know how to use.

About a year later, my wife and I decided to purchase our first computer. I am a CAD tech and I did not want anything less than I was using at work at the time. So I went to the local computer shop and had one built to try to save money. I had to have that new HOTTT Pentium chip. I was really excited to get the Pentium 90 that ran so hot it needed its own fan. I paid $150 bucks extra to double the RAM to 16 megs, and I got a huge 15" svga monitor. Final price for that computer was $2300 but man was I styling......AOL at a whopping 14.bps ...... life doesn't get any better....

Now 2004, I have a used $449.00 craftsman table saw that I still thoroughly enjoy, and that $2300 computer is darkening some corner in a land fill right now..... what I wouldn't give to has that $2300 in tools now, Funny what we are willing to spend money on.

Have a good evening Rick

[Rick Cox]

I am a long time wreck lurker. and a recent post by Jim Laumann "A 'puter in the shop" got me thinking.

In 1994 when I purchased my first house I wanted to buy a RAS to help with some of the fix ups needed. My father who lived close by talked me into getting a tablesaw because he already had a ras and said it would be nice to have both between us. So it was off to the local sears and I purchased a contractors table saw. I purchased the saw for $449.00 and I could not believe that I spent that much on something I didn't event know how to use.

About a year later, my wife and I decided to purchase our first computer. I am a CAD tech and I did not want anything less than I was using at work at the time. So I went to the local computer shop and had one built to try to save money. I had to have that new HOTTT Pentium chip. I was really excited to get the Pentium 90 that ran so hot it needed its own fan. I paid $150 bucks extra to double the RAM to 16 megs, and I got a huge 15" svga monitor. Final price for that computer was $2300 but man was I styling......AOL at a whopping 14.bps ...... life doesn't get any better....

Now 2004, I have a used $449.00 craftsman table saw that I still thoroughly enjoy, and that $2300 computer is darkening some corner in a land fill right now..... what I wouldn't give to has that $2300 in tools now, Funny what we are willing to spend money on.

[Frank Ketchum]

I have thought of this often. Spend a grand on a computer and it will be worth exactly nothing in 10 years whereas a grand invested in a jointer, tablesaw, or any blurfl will not only still be useful, but it will retain resale value.

Frank

[Tom Watson]

And a grand's worth of time invested in going to see furniture that is worth emulating will pay off in greater measure than either investment in hardware. Too much of this newsgroups's time is taken up with the investigation of the "How' in preference to the "What" or the "Why".

Pay for a plane ticket and sit in front of a Goddard-Townsend Chest for a couple of hours. Go to your local museum and visit the best examples of furniture to be found there. Pay for a nice lunch and a good glass of wine and think about the why and the what of the pieces that you best like.

Take your money and buy a good piece of furniture - take it into your house and your mind and think on what makes it good.

Thomas J. Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) (Real Email is tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet)

[Kevin B]

Yeah, I feel your pain. I just sold a bunch of old computers that I had laying around, a Sun Ultra 5 and a old DEC Alpha among them, that I had purchased used from clients over the years to mess around with at home. I figure about $1800.00 worth of stuff when I bought it. Got about $175.00 for it. At least I'll be able to get that nice Lie-Nielsen block plane I've had my eye on.

Kevin

[Greg]

I always stay off the bleeding edge of computer technology. It saves me a fortune.

[Greg O]

I have been upgrading every 3-4 years. What I am running now is a Compaq with a 667 Celeron. I may keep this one a bit longer! I don't do any gaming so I don't need blistering speed. This crate surf's the net and groups just fine. I figure when software makes its next jump and everything isn't compatable anymore then it will be time. Greg

[B a r r y B u r k e J r .]

I consider myself lucky to live 2 hrs from NYC and Boston, 1 hr from both Old Sturbridge Village and Hancock Shaker Village, and have some excellent art galleries that can be visited on a long lunch break.

Only recently did I realize the true value of visiting these places in the pursuit of this craft.

Barry

[Anthony Diodati]

That's what I say about my Compaq, pent II, 333 with win.98 1st edition in it. Work's just fine for me. Tony D.

[Mike in Mystic]

Interesting thread. I've been posting in that other one, too, but what the heck. It seems lately I've been indulging in both the computer AND woodworking purchasing arenas. I went from having a crapsman table saw and a few benchtop tools about 2 years ago, to having a Unisaw with 50" Bies, 3 routers, full-size drill press, bandsaw, 6" jointer, 12.5" planer, mortiser, scroll saw, OSS, etc. etc. etc. I don't think I'll be ALLOWED to buy any more tools for a LONG time. Good thing to know I won't need to hehe.

As for the PC department. I remember how excited my dad was when he brought home the Commodore 64 - I can't remember what year that was, I was just a kid. But, I do remember starting about age 12 or so (probably when we got that thing), being the ONLY kid to turn in typed reports at school and I'm sure getting browny points for it. My friends would spend hours at my house playing games on our BLAZING 286. I remember playing games on 5.25" floppies, where you had to change discs about every 15 minutes (they came with like 15 or something). So, what do I do now? Just before Christmas I got the go ahead and bought a $3300 computer. P4 3.2 Ghz HT processor, 2 Gb of DDR400 memory, 500 Gb RAID 0 hard drive set up, 8x DVD R/RW drive, 48x CD-RW drive, 256 Mb Radeon 9800 XT video card, 6.1 THX capable sound card, surround sound speakers (for my PC!!), TV tuner card & software (who needs TiVO??), and a 20" LCD flatscreen monitor. The thing is, I still get impatient when I start the computer hehe. It only takes 8 seconds from the power button to the desktop. Oh how times have changed.

Mike

[Rick Cox]

Autocad....sigh..... Speaking of money down the toilet....we have till the 15 to upgrade some of our 2000 seats or they will no longer be updateable....to me that is extorsion. I use Land Development Desktop and Civil packages which cost about $8000 for a new seat...sigh...

[Rick Cox]

"Who needs TiVo" That is one thing I dont mind spending money on... TiVo and the New Yankee workshop.....Or.....Nahmie on my time...... Try it you will like it have a good day Rick

[Mark Jerde]

My laptop & desktop each lost a hard drive in the past 12 months. Bummer reinstalling everything, and there were some things I didn't have backed up...

RAID 0 is "Striped Disk Array without Fault Tolerance." IMO this is too risky. My next desktop will be mirrored hard drives at a minimum.

My $0.02

-- Mark

[Mike in Mystic]

That was my point, now I can just pipe my cable signal into my computer and use that to record my shows. I don't know how much TiVO runs, but the set-up I'm using can be had for about $50 (TV tuner card) and included software. Electronic programming guides can be found online for free

Plus, there's no monthly fees (something I'm assuming TiVO has, but I'm not sure). I can then burn the shows onto CDs or DVDs (if I want particularly high quality) and watch them on my TV via the DVD player. Or, just watch them on the computer. I think it kicks butt.

Mike

[Mike in Mystic]

I thought about that, but at the moment my storage needs are pretty high. I've only had this system for about a month and have used a full 200 Gb of storage space. I turn over a lot of space with multimedia work - I've gotten pretty involved in making home movies with my DV camcorder. Reinstalling stuff IS a bummer, but it really isn't that big a deal. I've done it many times, and it usually takes maybe 2-3 hours max. Not that big a deal, IMO. I routinely backup data to CD's, and now that I have the DVD writer, I've been using some DVD-RW discs (basically extra 4.3 Gb hard drives). I would bet I only have about 10-20 Gb of "critical" data that I need to make sure I don't lose. Plus I have access to network storage space (about 100 Gb for my personal use) that I can access from home, too.

In all the years I've been using computers, I've only had one hard drive fail. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I think that the mfgs have gotten pretty good at quality control.

The other big issue is that the RAID 1 arrays suffer pretty significantly in performance compared to the RAID 0 arrays. What's the point of having all the processor, memory and video performance if you handcuff it with a slow data storage/retrieval architecture?

If this were business intensive and I couldn't handle a day of downtime, worst case, then I probably would do the same as you and go for the RAID 1, but then I'd probably go with a terabyte of total storage (500 Gb usable).

Mike

[jo4hn]

Rick Cox wrote: [snip]

Having made a living as a computer jockey since nineteen and aught sixty-two, and having bought a RAS in 1965, here are some drips of wisdom (?) from jo4hn's john. If WW tools had changed as much as computers in the past 40 years, one would walk into the shop, say good-day to the RAS, tell it cherry end-table, and go watch tv. The saw would quickly order and accept delivery of the wood, oversee jointing and planing, joinery, dry fit, glue-up, sanding and painting within a few hours.

The same could be said of toasters and sewing machines. Somebody already did it with cars. The computer is a different tool in the infancy of its development. The TS (and toaster and...) are fairly mature tools and will not change much unless the addition of a computer chip will create a more saleable item. Dream away folks. mahalo, jo4hn

[Mark Jerde]

To amplify... installing the OS isn't bad. I've done it probably 200 times since Win3.x. It's everything else I use as a software developer that takes the install/config time. Starting with FDISK it's about a 1.75 day process. Office XP Developer, Visual Studio.NET, SQL Server 2000, ... This time around I didn't install Delphi, Visual Studio 6 or IBM's DB2 database. Hope I don't need 'em anymore.

I'd had good luck for years too then :-( two failures in a few months.

IIRC RAID 5 has performance and fault tolerance. More info here.

could leave your transient data on RAID 0 for max speed and have the OS and programs on mirrored (if you were concerned about fault tolerance). Especially on separate controllers that would be very fast. I've read of systems setup this way.

-- Mark

[Silvan]

The bright side is that the $448 Wal-Mart POS Xmas special computer is three times faster than the one I use every day. The days of spending $2300 on a computer are over unless you're a gamer.

[Greg G.]

I've been doing that very thing since 1996, when a decent video capture card cost $800. Guess what that card is worth now... I DO have the complete NYW on disk, however...

Greg G.

[Jerry Gilreath]

Damn, have you seen the prices of the Vic20's and Commodore 64's at flea markets and things??? Collectors are paying a pretty penny for them. There's one or the other, I can't remember which, in the Smithsonian. I'm hanging on to both my Vic 20 and Commodore.