www.robowars.org

RoboWars Australia Forum Index -> Off-Topic

The RoboWars Computer Tech Support Department
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 65, 66, 67, 68  Next

Post new topic   Reply to topic
  Author    Thread
marto
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 08 Jul 2004
Posts: 5459
Location: Brisbane, QLD


 Reply with quote  

Bluetooth is evil.
_________________
Steven Martin
Twisted Constructions
http://www.botbitz.com

Post Fri Aug 21, 2015 9:56 am 
 View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail MSN Messenger
Nick
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 11802
Location: Sydney, NSW


 Reply with quote  

Its true! Now my laptop has developed some serious video problems - obviously due to that evil bluetooth mouse Laughing
_________________
Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Post Fri Aug 21, 2015 2:03 pm 
 View user's profile Send private message
Valen
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 07 Jul 2004
Posts: 4436
Location: Sydney


 Reply with quote  

also, you fixed my computer in 1997 and now my microwave is playing up I'm sure its your fault fix it or I'll leave a bad review on yelp.
(Or something)

Its super weird that the mouse would only mess up inside a browser, I mean, weird.
You can change which bluetooth stack you use I believe (or you could a while ago), might be worth a look.
_________________
Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

Post Fri Aug 21, 2015 5:16 pm 
 View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website AIM Address Yahoo Messenger MSN Messenger ICQ Number
marto
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 08 Jul 2004
Posts: 5459
Location: Brisbane, QLD


 Reply with quote  
I need more Powah

Oh guys. I am doing a few projects around the place and I am starting to hit a deficit of computing power.

I need PCs to do:
- Video Editing
- Solid Modelling
- Robot Operating System programming
- Video Streaming
- Matlab control of Robots.

My poor 2011 MBP is still going OK, I also have my Surface 3. .(But both these now have no USB ports)

I have an Air and a old Dual core AMD netbook but its just getting really tedious to try and do a lot of things. Particularly since I need USB for a lot of things.

I have started distributing these over a lot of older boxes I have lying around and running VNC but they are just too slow. I have 2 atom PCs which are chugging along for the current Robot Tracker and ROS box. And I also have my old intel box which is a dual core pre iX series.

I am thinking it might be time to try and acquire a few desktops which can add to my farm when I need it to do things.

Suggestions on new or old hardware? It doesn't need to look pretty it just needs to work. I have plenty of spinning drives at my disposal so storage isn't an issue just speed and processing power.

Steve
_________________
Steven Martin
Twisted Constructions
http://www.botbitz.com

Post Sat Aug 22, 2015 11:16 am 
 View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail MSN Messenger
marto
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 08 Jul 2004
Posts: 5459
Location: Brisbane, QLD


 Reply with quote  

Interesting finds

https://www.jbhifi.com.au/computers-tablets/desktops/alienware/alienware-alpha-console-i3/612430/

https://www.jbhifi.com.au/computers-tablets/desktops/apple/apple-mac-mini-2-6ghz-i5/630192/
I didn't know minis were that cheap.

I have skimmed MSY's catalogue I remember getting a lot more CPU bang for your buck back in the day. Not sure if its worth the extra effort upgrading some boxes.
_________________
Steven Martin
Twisted Constructions
http://www.botbitz.com

Post Sat Aug 22, 2015 11:36 am 
 View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail MSN Messenger
Nick
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 11802
Location: Sydney, NSW


 Reply with quote  

What sort of budget are you looking at and also what OS and video editing software? I would check if your more demanding apps are properly multi-threaded; if they are it would be better to pick a lower speed, higher core CPU, while apps that can't use multiple cores do better with a higher frequency chip.

For video editing, check if the app can use HW acceleration on the video card; Premier and maybe others can use nVidia cards but not AMD. Specify a separate disk for scratch files and use something fast. Defrag the scratch disk regularly unless its an SSD. Video editing often benefits from extra RAM as well.
_________________
Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Post Sat Aug 22, 2015 1:51 pm 
 View user's profile Send private message
marto
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 08 Jul 2004
Posts: 5459
Location: Brisbane, QLD


 Reply with quote  

Yeh tbh I did it on my surface i5 from its internal ssd. Was a bit painful I tried with vids on external disk over usb3 but didn't seem any better.

Really don't have lot of cash to spend but it's getting to the stage where I really need something as its killing my productivity. Maybe $1000 tops.

Steve
_________________
Steven Martin
Twisted Constructions
http://www.botbitz.com

Post Sat Aug 22, 2015 5:25 pm 
 View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail MSN Messenger
Nick
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 11802
Location: Sydney, NSW


 Reply with quote  

Tricky! If you have an existing chassis to re-use, I would get these parts for around $1,020:

ASUS Z97-C/4 main board http://tinyurl.com/o9r8ywc Nothing fancy, uses the Z97 chipset that has plenty of useful features and performance.

ASUS GTX750TI-PH-2GD5. 2048MB GDDR5 video card. http://tinyurl.com/nlfpbzw Not bleeding edge, but fits the budget well.

Intel Core I5-4690K, 3.50GHZ, Quad-core, 6mb cache http://tinyurl.com/ps6tgho The unlocked CPU should overclock like crazy.

8GB Corsair (2x4GB) DDR3 2133MHz Vengeance PRO DIMM http://tinyurl.com/p3pdbt7 8Gb should be fine for most video editing, this stuff has reasonable speed without breaking the budget. If I was going to go over budget, I'd double the RAM.

If you can shoehorn that into a case with a reasonable PSU and room for a couple of disks, it should be a solid performer. There are thousands of other options to combine so you can mix & match to shave to budget or increase performance.
_________________
Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Post Sat Aug 22, 2015 6:18 pm 
 View user's profile Send private message
Spockie-Tech
Site Admin


Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia


 Reply with quote  

I just got myself a refurb W520 Thinkpad after shopping around for a bit. From BudgetPC, but you can find them on Ebay quite easily too..

~$700-$800, 2nd Gen I7, 16gRam, 15" 1920x1080 screen, Desktop-power Quadro2000 Graphics card, mSata + Sata2 slots for dual SSD's. It screams along.

Only drawback is you need the high power 170watt power brick, the standard 90w thinkpad ones wont run it, So I need to get a new spare supply for at home and take with me use.

As usual, I dont think you can beat 2nd hand Thinkpads for bang-vs-buck and quality, although it is a laptop, you would have to add a big screen for serious cad/desktop work.

Its got so much power, i run VirtualBox in pass through-mode with direct-hard-drive-writes to the actual windows partition, with the native Windows 7 install running as a VM under Mageia Linux, and if I full screen the VM, you cant even tell that Windows isnt running native speed wise for general purpose work. Linux and Windows running simultaneously and it cruises on about 25% cpu load.

Well worth a look if you hand handle "Refurb" (not "new") and want portable power on a budget.
_________________
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

Post Sun Aug 23, 2015 6:15 pm 
 View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website MSN Messenger
marto
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 08 Jul 2004
Posts: 5459
Location: Brisbane, QLD


 Reply with quote  

I think I was looking at a similar model on ebay few months ago. I didn't win it unfortunately.

I am actually tossing up getting a second hand i5 from a recycled computer place in fyswick. There is some decent i5 machines for < $300, throw in some more ram and should be ok for processing. Will see how that goes to start with for CAD and might see if I can get something a little better later for vid editing.
_________________
Steven Martin
Twisted Constructions
http://www.botbitz.com

Post Sun Aug 23, 2015 7:38 pm 
 View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail MSN Messenger
Valen
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 07 Jul 2004
Posts: 4436
Location: Sydney


 Reply with quote  

Don't bother with I7's if you are after value for money.

For video encoding and the like if you can get hardware acceleration it'll make it like 10x faster (depending on CPU/GPU).

I have a full size nvidia GTX570 you can have if it'll help.
http://www.gigabyte.com.au/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3685#ov

You might want to take a look at resource monitor and see where the bottlenecks are in your workflows before throwing money at hardware.

Hit up ebay for more ram, some of it seems super cheap.

You might want to look at ebay for realview compatible nvidia cards if solidworks graphics are slowing you down, you can offload it then.

For any laptops you get, make sure you get one with PCMCIA or whatever the latest version of that is, then use a PCMCIA > USB card for your development ;->
or you could perhaps look at one of these http://www.bb-elec.com/Products/USB-Connectivity/USB-Isolators/USB-Isolators.aspx

@brett, dang that is a nice laptop.
_________________
Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

Post Mon Aug 24, 2015 9:09 am 
 View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website AIM Address Yahoo Messenger MSN Messenger ICQ Number
dyrodium
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 6476
Location: Sydney


 Reply with quote  

When Ash's PC exploded I was browsing gumtree every day to find what was around locally - you can get pretty lucky with idiots selling stuff for way below what it's actually worth. Managed to swing a GTX760 for $150. Haggle the crap out of things too haha. An i7 930 or so should be found pretty cheap and would still be plenty powerful imho (you did a pretty good job future-proofing that PC Jake Razz).

Your location makes it a bit tricker so does the current financial climate... but slow and steady part acquisition is the key I reckon.

EDIT: Also the Z800 workstations sometimes pop up for crazy cheap, specs vary wildly but they're beasts.
_________________
( •_•)

( •_•)>⌐■-■

(⌐■_■)

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Post Mon Aug 24, 2015 12:55 pm 
 View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website MSN Messenger
Philip
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 18 Jun 2004
Posts: 3842
Location: Queensland near Brisbane


 Reply with quote  

Has anyone heard of "key to search ltd". My computer is asking for permission to let this program make changes. Should I allow this or try to find it and delete it?
_________________
So even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems

Post Fri Sep 11, 2015 4:15 am 
 View user's profile Send private message
marto
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 08 Jul 2004
Posts: 5459
Location: Brisbane, QLD


 Reply with quote  

I am going to go with delete it.
_________________
Steven Martin
Twisted Constructions
http://www.botbitz.com

Post Fri Sep 11, 2015 8:46 am 
 View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail MSN Messenger
Valen
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 07 Jul 2004
Posts: 4436
Location: Sydney


 Reply with quote  

try to find where it came from, make sure nothing else has hitched along for the ride
_________________
Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

Post Fri Sep 11, 2015 11:47 am 
 View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website AIM Address Yahoo Messenger MSN Messenger ICQ Number
  Display posts from previous:      

Forum Jump:
Jump to:  

Post new topic   Reply to topic
Page 66 of 68

Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 65, 66, 67, 68  Next

Forum Rules:
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum

 

Last Thread | Next Thread  >
Powered by phpBB: © 2001 phpBB Group
millenniumFalcon Template By Vereor.