[TenTec] (ham station computer choice)

[Rick - DJ0IP / NJ0IP]

James, you didn't give us any specifics.  
"Which" Dell products?
Remember, they all make consumer products and business products.
There is a world of difference between the two lines of products.

If you stick with their business products, i.e. Latitude for laptops and
Optiplex for desktops, you should have no problem at all.

Also, if you are familiar with the history of Dell, they only targeted the
consumer market in their early years.  They begin a heavy focus on
Enterprise class computers in the mid 90's.  Took them a while to ramp up
their quality.  Today their business computers are excellent and have been
for a dozen years or so.

What they were like 25 years ago doesn't really matter.
It's what they build and sell now that matters.

I've recently had 3 Latitudes and 3 Optiplexes and none had any problems
like that.
All were off-lease units.

I also challenge the statement "the most reliable electrically quiet
machines were home built,"

Any PC Purchased from digital Equipment as early as 1985 was totally quiet
and highly reliable.
Of course DEC only built business class products.
When I set up Germany's first Packet Radio Cluster in the early 90's, I used
a "used" DEC PC (a VaxMate).  It ran 24x7 for another dozen years without
failing. It was then replaced with a more powerful PC, but continued to run
another couple years before finally going belly up.  We had a second VaxMate
as a spare, which was used privately for the same length of time.  

Also, one thing that people should understand is, brand new products
(components) can have intermittent problems.  Most of the time it won't be a
problem but when it happens, it can be a costly hair-pulling experience.

When you build your own and it crashes once or twice per day, randomly, due
to an intermittent memory bank or mother board, it is very difficult to find
the problem unless you have spares to swap in and out.  I have had this
happen twice with home-brew PCs, and I always built with top quality
components. Once I located the problem by swapping the board back and forth
a few times and was 100% sure, I tried to get a replacement under guarantee.
I was told both times the intermittent board tested good.  They refused a
refund or replacement.

Yes, it is usually easy to build your own, but sometimes shit happens.  So I
would warn people not to believe that just because someone had done it a
couple of times and was successful, that it is always that easy.  Murphy is
still alive and kicking!

BTW, I also figured out the refurbished Dell deal about 5 or 6 years ago and
since then, I have stopped building my own computers.  No need.

73 - Rick, DJ0IP
(Nr. Frankfurt am Main)


-----Original Message-----
From: TenTec [mailto:tentec-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of K8JHR
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2014 7:29 PM
To: Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment
Subject: Re: [TenTec] (ham station computer choice)

I totally agree about installing the OS from scratch without all the applets
and utilities the major vendors put install on new machines.

Funny you mention Dell and other commercial vendors in connection with low
electrical noise, low EMI/RFI, etc. ... My experience differs dramatically.

I spent fifteen years decades studying, reviewing, and beta testing speech
recognition software and hardware, and Dell computers were some of the
noisiest and poorest shielded computers available.  Worse yet, Dell insisted
on building their own versions of various third party sound card chips,
producing both on-board and add-on board implementation,  which did not work
well, and produced awful interference.  Same for Gateway and many HP and,
especially Compaq and IBM laptop models.  Noisy as heck.  This was one of
the major reasons they started producing external USB sound cards - to place
the A/D converter outside the box, and away from the hash inside.  Once
converted to a digital data stream, it was pretty immune to it, but the
analog stages were vulnerable, so the farther away you could convert, the
better.  Again, the commercially built boxes from Dell, Gateway, HP, Compaq,
and IBM were among the worst offenders.  Speech recognition mavens and
gamers all know on-board mfr-implemented sound cards are generally poor
performers compared with the better add-on cards.  I use a $30 ASUS sound
card, which is way better than the on-board chip on my ASUS motherboard.  We
often cured noisy Compaq and IBM laptops with a piece of alum foil as a
simple shield - it would have cost IBM about .5 
cents to do that, but they did not back in the day.   It is somewhat 
better now, but on board implementations by mobo makers are are generally
still weaker performers then third party add on cards.  Dell claimed it was
selling Creative LIVE! sound cards, but they were "Dell-built Creative
LIVE!" cards... and they sucked.  Not the same card, just the same A/D chip.

The most reliable, electrically quiet  machines were home built.

But your point about commercially available boxes coming loaded down with
all sorts of unnecessary applets and utilities and other excess baggage is
spot on and we spent two decades trying to pare it all down, 
striving for a lean, mean dictating machine.   All those little applets 
and utilities rob valuable processor time from our most productive
applications.  The more time allocated to the recognition engine, the more
accurate the results.

This is another reason I have always built my own boxes from the board out,
selecting known-good components - not always the most expensive, just known
to be quiet and work well.

I ran my office for over 8 years alone, with three computers, loads of OCR
scanners, speech recognition, and all without a secretary... my computers
had to be quick, quiet, and work as expected.  I saved enough money to
retire young, and while this is Just MY take, I may never buy a commercially
built box.  Never had a hard disk fail, either.  My only calamity was when I
toasted a mother board by hot-swapping a sound card/modem card - not a good
idea ... a self inflicted wound hurts the most.

Just MY take...  your mileage may differ.

------ K8JHR  ----------------------------------------





On 5/7/2014 10:50 AM, K7TXO Radio wrote:
> To make sure my ham shack computer is focused on applications I use in 
> ham radio, I order business computers from DELL.  It does not have to 
> be a DELL brand but the point is, I order a computer with just an 
> Operating System on it.  Nothing else.  And then I install the programs I
want.
> The difference really is that a store bought "consumer" computer comes 
> loaded up with all kinds of software.  Some of the programs are 
> already running to some degree when the computer is powered up, 
> occupying cpu cycles, memory space and possibly some disk drive-head
activity.
>
> Fortunately new computers we buy today are more powerful than ever so 
> even a store bought computer will tend to handle all of this 
> background activity ok.  But why not start clean?  Of course you can 
> still build a computer from parts.  After years of working with 
> equipment in EMI/RFI labs, I yearned for the times when someone would 
> bring a computer containing an interface card for compliance testing 
> that was a hand-built system.  Basically a smoke 'em if you have 'em 
> session from the otherwise rather dull process of testing; it 
> sometimes was a great joy to watch some of these computers smoke and even
catch on fire under
> test.   If we didn't burn these up, at the very least some of them would
> have issues that made them cute transmitters at some frequency (or
> frequencies) that you would not want in your ham shack.  Or anywhere 
> in your house in some cases.  In most cases the issue would be bad or 
> loose bonding that could easily be fixed but our job in the lab was to 
> do testing, not troubleshoot and fix equipment.  And please note that 
> just because a power supply or motherboard, PCI card, etc. says it is 
> FCC/European accepted does not mean it really was.  Unfortunately 
> there is deception in the world.  And finally there were cases that 
> collectively, the assemblies used in a hand built PC would not pass 
> but on an individual basis, some of these assemblies can be within
tolerance.
>
> We can therefore expect that a major brand name computer that is built 
> correctly should be clean for emissions and at least less susceptible 
> to external sources of radiation.  I prefer to start with a descent 
> computer that also has either zero software on it from the 
> manufacturer or just an Operating System.  Computers can be 
> frustrating enough either because of issues from non-compatible 
> assemblies, bad grounds, non-compliance or perhaps a plethora of 
> software conflicts. "A clean computer is a happy computer".  (And a 
> happy user.)  And we might get away with less performance if the 
> computer is not already tied up with rubbing it's cpu chip and patting
it's memory too much, at the same time.
>
> DELL Optiplex may be a choice to look into.  I have spec'd these for 
> years for use with specialized interface cards including Digital to 
> Analog and Analog to Digital converters for external devices. Optiplex 
> computers can be purchased new at a reasonable price, direct from DELL.
> These computers are not typically sold at retailers; they would be 
> rather boring for the consumer looking for something to plug in and 
> play games or run a word processor or spreadsheet, AOL, etc. because 
> none of this is loaded. Watch out for purchasing a refurbished unit.  
> I tried one I ordered through WALMART.  Filthy inside with dust balls.  
> The DVD read only drive was busted.  Rather than send it back, I cleaned
it and
> put in a DVD Writer I had intended to put in it anyway.    Hard disc
> failed after about 6 months but I had a good, current backup.  A new 
> drive and a reload of the backup got most of my ham station 
> configuration running pretty quickly.  So I recommend a new computer 
> where you have zero hours on the system.  More time to use the radio, 
> hi hi.
>
> Gene  /  K7TXO
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