Best Old PC for Scope

tomylee · Post by **tomylee** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 9:41 am

Hello,

Since I miss my scope cards sadly, and since I wont upgrade my daw I need a second PC for my scope, and then hopefully in a configuration where there are fast grapahics and no IRQ problems - in fact the new pc would only house one scope card, no hard disk (boot over lan from my primary pc) no noisemakers, a retail PSU with deactivated fans etc, the pc will only run my scope card (6dsp probably) and do nothing else. Does anyone know a mainboard which can do this very well? I still have a 2400+ Athlon XP in the Socket A formfactor, maybe I can reuse this one with some old motherboard...

any suggestions for what (old) mobo or cpu I should take?

greets
Tom

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 11:43 am

I have a Gigabyte GA946GMX-S2 with onboard Graphic, 10/100/1000 LAN that can take anything from a Celeron D to a Quadcore, socket 775.
I paid 65 Euro for the mobo, houses 2 Pulsar Ones under XP (yes, I eventually had to give in...), no problems.

you might as well get one of those Pentium 3 office boxes with an ASUS Tusl or Cusl mobo - there some Maxdata on eBay featuring that board which even come in a really excellent case for 50-80 Euro complete.

cheers, Tom

tomylee · Post by **tomylee** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 11:46 am

ah two toms, we could make a navigation system together

thanks for the reply, I will look up those components - the computer really does not have to have any cpu power, and should use very few watts so I could cool it passive in the best case

I will check the maxdata things now

thanks!

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 12:10 pm

Still getting great results here with an XP2200+ in a late model Asus A7N8X. Not the greatest computer in the world, but it works well with Scope (for us anyway).

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 12:10 pm

- Navigator
this is the Maxdata I mean - it's not always mentioned which chipset is inside.
These boxes have been sold with whatever was available, but as a corporate supplier Maxdata is a quality brand here in Germany.

cheers, Tom

tomylee · Post by **tomylee** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 12:36 pm

do you think one can cool any pentium III passively?

tomylee · Post by **tomylee** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 12:40 pm

uaahhh, this could become a big research marathon...If they only made a box with usb for VGA control, and 2 or more adat connections, and I would be in heaven, I´m in heaven la la la la...

Tau · Post by **Tau** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 1:23 pm

I recently did just that - built an old pc for Scope only. I've been getting excellent results with an AsRock P4i65G Mobo with AGP and a 3GHz PIV (HT-disabled). 1 GB stick of 400 RAM and an old IDE Drive - onboard LAN enabled, and USB disabled. It was vey cheap and works great, although it's not exactly low noise or power-saving (3 Scope boards + ATI 9600XT graphics...)

Neutron · Post by **Neutron** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 1:24 pm

I used to use a celeron tutatalin 1200nhz which was passively cooled with a zalman flower heatsink. very low power useage, it could be easilly underclocked to about 1000mhz and a lower voltage, since it would overclock to 1500 easy without any voltage increase.

I still have it and an adapter that lets it work in non tuatalin motherboards.

tomylee · Post by **tomylee** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 1:35 pm

@neutron,

what Mobo did/do you use? What chipset would you recommend for that? I think I will check some old celerons - I remember me also having one celeron 500 which was supposed to get overclocked to 850mhz, in my case it got to 766.. but thats another story

they still are very power friendly. I think I will not even have to use a hard disc. It should be possible to let the unit boot over lan from my first pc which has plenty of disc space free. If it used very little energy I could try to run it with an external passive power supply, but I´m not sure about that yet...

tomylee · Post by **tomylee** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 1:58 pm

what do you think of this?

http://cgi.ebay.de/Intel-Celeron-633-Fu ... otohosting

greets
Tom

Neutron · Post by **Neutron** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 2:11 pm

i had that celeron in a TUSL2 and later i put it with the adapter into the original shuttle SFF pc (which died due to VIA chipset crappiness) but the CPU is fine.

you can have it if you want. just pay shipping. the heat spreader has been lapped. (machine lapped, not sandpapered!)

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 2:51 pm

tomylee wrote:do you think one can cool any pentium III passively?

actually there's no need to - my Scythe Katana Fan is less noisy than the vibrant parts of my recent fanless PSU were

cheers, Tom

tomylee · Post by **tomylee** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 7:50 am

@neutron, your offer is too kind

- I will probaby have to buy one computer by its own, damn, I wish somebody could do this for me, since otherwise I had to buy every part separate and ship it to italy - the shipping costs from germany to italy are mostle immense...So I think I will grab a complete pc, then I will only have to change the psu and the processor urgghhhh...I hate these computer buying things, although I´m not untalanted with it...