At 9/1/2006 03:31 AM, Thomas wrote:

 >Prior to my first home-build, I had an AT&T 286, then a no-name 286 with
 >a larger hard drive.  Then a Zeos 386SX laptop.  Then a Vectron Pentium
 >133MHz.

I was so sure Zeos was going to beat the pants off everybody. They 
either sold out or got mismanaged (like DEC and Northhgate) 'cose 
they disappeared.

As far as building your own - for years it seems like no matter what 
happened and how cheap "things" became I always ended up spending 
$3000 for each "upgrade" which happened somewhere around every 3 
years. I could always get good prices for Dell workstations, but my 
home computer, even with refurbisheds, seem to cost me a bundle.

We just moved the clinic and finally I gave up control of the LAN. We 
decided to bring the hardware in-house (practice software was ran by 
an ASP) and I didn't feel competent nor did I want to spend the time 
to run a 4-server network (that's not how I make my living). So I 
ended up with having to nuke umpteen workstations (the new IT guys 
replaced them all), which was very time-consuming, before we gave 
them away, and I felt bad about trashing the two little servers we 
were running for file server and Exchange/email server.

One of them was used to capture DICOM video images so it had some 
nice video-capture cards (if you can use a couple of PXC200L-02 cards 
- input is via a BNC terminal, let me know - I"ll send them to you as 
means of thanking you for taking the time to hand-hold me). So I 
stripped them to their motherboards, gave my old Dell XPS to my son 
who has been coveting it anyway, and started this project. Been 
needing to "upgrade" for about a year, but I couldn't justify the 
expense. Boosted the RAM to 1GB and the extra CPU and bus speed gives 
me what I need for the next 2 years. But, I really am enjoying this a 
lot, so I figure I will be cleaning up the space behind the writing 
desk and putting in a workbench within weeks, if not days. I am also 
learning to convert analog video to digital (tapes, film, etc. to 
DVD), so I am having more fun than any man deserves. :-D I am 
starting to learn Dreamweaver (learned some nasty lessons using 
prefab templates), so I almost feel tempted to never go to work ever 
again, 'cept I also like work. Funny thing is that my 20-year-old 
Honors student son (dig this, Math major) comes to his daddy to help 
him with his computer "problems." Love it!!

So, again thanks, Thomas. I have made copious notes and I will be 
asking questions as I go along with the next box. After that... 
modding! That ought to freak the whole family out. I am sure I still 
have some black lights from the 60s, somewhere in the garage. ;-}

Kind regards,

Andrew


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