For an inexpensive small IBM Compatible PC , go to eBAY and search for
NUC6i5. You'll find some starting under $100. The Intel NUC6 comes in
two sizes, one little over 1" tall and one about 2.5" high. I recommend
the one using the Core i5 CPU. K3LR uses 18 of them for Contesting and
6 of the newer NUC7's for his Proteus-based Skimmers). I use a NUCi5
with DX Log, Win-Clus and N1MM+ (mainly DXLog). The smaller NUC only
uses M.2 SSD's. The taller version has room for a 2.5" Disk in addition
to the M.2 SSD
About half of K3LR's NUC's were USED and bought off of eBay, as are the
several I use.
73 --> Dave, W9PA
On 2022-11-23 02:19, Michael Adams wrote:
Over the summer, I joined the Mac family when I was looking for a
lightweight laptop with decent power, good battery life, and the
ability to charge off USB-C. I got it because my work laptop is so
locked down as to be unusable for personal communications, and my
current Windows laptop and its power brick are rather bulky, and its
battery life sucks. (It's a "gaming laptop" -- lots of memory, lots of
power, great graphics...all at the expense of a high power draw.)
There are a lot of things I like about the Mac, but after a couple of
experiences of using it with a transceiver when operating
portable....I'm not a fan of the ham software I've used so far with it.
Perhaps that's more a reflection of my being used to the ham software
available on PCs, and not having taken the time to climb the learning
curve for the relevant Mac applications. But I'm thinking about going
portable for a QSO party in the spring, and I've started to contemplate
the logistics about lugging my Windows laptop for that adventure, so I
can use N1MM.
My $0.02 worth for the original question -- For "just a shack
computer":
* an i5 or an i7 processor (or whatever the AMD equivalent is), speed
mostly irrelevant
* at least 16GB RAM (you could probably make do with 8 if you never
multitask)
* solid state drive, size determined by other uses (probably minimum
500GB)
* minimum 1 HDMI/DP port if you have an ultrawide monitor; 2 such ports
if you're using normal-width monitors
* if you need it and get a desktop, add a real serial port, either by
PCI card, or if the motherboard supports it, cabling the port directly
into the appropriate socket on the MB
* extra sound interface (a good USB fob is probably sufficient) for
interface with the transceiver
If you splurge, my preference would be for extra money to go towards
extra RAM first....but that's a reflection of my bias towards running
too many programs on a computer at once.
The most recent Windows machine I bought for ham purposes was an
impulse buy of a small (5"x4.5"x1.5") no-name PC off Amazon:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0977YQT3K I got it for less than
$300 a year ago. I was uncertain about buying an unknown Chinese
brand machine, but at that price it seemed like an acceptable gamble
for a project toy.
It's not my shack computer, but it is running my cluster node, some
home automation tasks, and I've done some Office work on it as well
without issue. I expect it'd be fine for most ordinary shack purposes.
It's advertised as being able to be mounted on the back of a monitor
(saving desk space/reducing desk clutter), but I'd be a little
concerned about doing that if the monitor tends to run warm.
I haven't looked to see if there are newer/better such machines
available on the market; I imagine there might be. I wouldn't be
terribly surprised if some of those had discounted prices on Friday.
Just read through the reviews before buying, to reduce the risk of
investing in a lemon.
--
Michael Adams | mda@n1en.org
-----Original Message-----
From: CQ-Contest <cq-contest-bounces+mda=n1en.org@contesting.com> On
Behalf Of Gary J Ferdinand
Sent: Tuesday, 22 November, 2022 16:03
To: af5cc@fidmail.com
Cc: Gerry Hull <vy1aaa@vy1ja.ca>; Ron Notarius W3WN
<wn3vaw@verizon.net>; CQ-Contest@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] new hamshack computer
I'd get a Mac of appropriate size :)
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