[Dxspider-support] Small PC's for DxSpider

[John]

Since I see there is interest in running small, low power PC's, I would 
like to share my success in using refurbished thin clients to run 
DxSpider and my contest operations. The best model I have found is the 
Wyse J400 WT941GXL. It runs at 1GHz.  For DxSpider you will need to 
remove the IDE flash drive and add a hard drive into the case. Space is 
tight, but a standard IDE drive can be fitted and secured with velcro. 
If the one you have has no 4 pin drive power connector you can splice 
one into the power supply cable using a connector from a defunct PC 
supply. The unit has one RS232 port for your TNC. There is space also in 
the case for a PCI card. I run less keyboard and monitor and with 532MB 
of RAM with Ubuntu. I have measured the power load on these and they 
idle at about 25 watts.

For my contest operations I add a SIIG dual serial port PCI card for rig 
control, cw keying and logging, and by the way, the internal audio does 
a great job for RTTY decoding. COM1 is used for FSK. We used these with 
great success at NP3U for Multi2 operation in the last two CQWW WPX RTTY 
contests!

These Wyse units are shipped with the Windows XP Embedded OS with 532MB 
IDE flash drives. I have customized at least a dozen of these with ham 
radio software. They then are diskless and fanless!. Logging is done on 
a USB thumbdrive.

John W1AN
telnet dxusa.net 7300