Not really partying. How about working like it's 2019? Sweating like it's 2019?
That's too obscure. Allow me to explain.
At the end of November in '19, Mrs. Graybeard and I replaced the two computers we use every day with new ones. The main reason was that her computer was dying after the nearby lightning strike we had in August that damaged a lot of stuff in the house - the few things that weren't surge protected. The computer power supplies were plugged into a surge-protected strip but lightning got into her system by one of those things that appear purely random. The length and position of the things like the video monitor cables or the Ethernet cables to the network hub. Her computer was dying a little more day by day. Slowly at first, then faster. It had to be replaced.
The work in "working like it's 2019" was migrating to our current computers. Migrating to a new computer is always a tedious if not outright painful process.
For the last few weeks I've been working to start migrating my ham shack computer to a newer box, hopefully for improvements in speed and ability. For perspective, the machine in the ham shack is a Dell Precision T3500 Workstation and I had one of those on my desk for running design software back around 2010 or '11. I think the 2019 machine I'm typing on now is faster than the "high performance workstation" from a decade before. I'm trying to switch to a machine that I hope to be faster than this one. Without breaking the bank.
Over the years, many things I do in my station have come to rely on the computer and I see what I believe to be indications of the T3500 being overloaded.
I went looking for a used/refurbished computer. This computer uses an Intel multicore processor called a Core i7-9700. The i7 is the "generation" of the processor, the 9 is the revision level of the hardware, and in both cases a rough rule is, the higher the better. I honestly don't know what the 700 means but I've looked it up before and didn't lodge any "get this, not that" rule to keep in mind while looking. Besides there are look-ups to help decipher this code.
I've been shopping for a Core i7-10700, FWIW. There are stories down that road, but I'll leave them for another time.
Why do I want a faster machine? I want to be able to do something like this:
This is a piece of software called SDR Console (or SDRC). What it's doing there is running seven simultaneous receivers in one ham band (6m). It allows you to monitor more than just one frequency or mode, which is what virtually all the ham transceivers on the market allow. In voice or Morse code, you are the demodulator. With this software, you can monitor a different mode in each of those windows and run more copies of the demodulation software. Maybe old fashioned CW in one, Radio Teletype (RTTY), or SSB voice in another, as well as the "new hotness" of FT8, FT4 and other error correcting modes.
Again, why? Because it's cool.
Oh, c'mon - get an Alienware laptop...
ReplyDeleteAlienware will definitely future-proof you as well, especially for running SDR Console, in my opinion. It certainly exceeds the requirements for a satisfactory experience. Although, since SDR Console is microsoft windows only, the 'future-proof' lasts only as long as that conglomerate decides to let you use 'their' software (updates and such). And definitely invest in a laptop cooler base. Alternatively, if the unit is not going 'mobile', consider putting together a desktop as a SDR Consoler server especially to ensure there is sufficient power for the USB SDR dongles - they will need significant amounts that are not often available in laptop power bricks and laptop power distribution. Definitely cool fun...
DeleteRegrettably, Alienware seems to be beyond the budget.
DeleteThe guy who put together the station I'm patterning mine after bought a gaming PC to run everything, and it's a Core i9 machine, liquid cooled, 64GB RAM and what I could find approaching that was beyond the budget.
His demo is ONE Airspy R2. That's in the shack already, but not hooked up. I've run that out here, in place of the RTL-SDR USB dongle I use regularly and it's noticeably better even just monitoring FM broadcast.
Surround yourself with three 40" monitors and split that window across all of them. Add some glowy blue LED lights around the room and a couple monitors looking at satellite tracks, space weather, and GOES imagery, turn off the main room light, and you've got a living space geeks like us have hankered after since before we can remember!
ReplyDeleteRight now I have one 17" monitor and I'm thinking of adding one. I'd have to switch from a surplus Steelcase office desk to something bigger and rebuild a lot of stuff to get much more in there. Otherwise, I love this idea!
DeleteI use monitor holders that bolt onto the walls and swing out and around for positioning. Amazon has dozens of them, and they aren't expensive.
DeleteONE? 17"???? yikes. I've got 2 @24" full HD for my main pc, a 24" mounted on a wall (with the swing out arm) for the linux box NVR above the center monitor, and a 24" on the left for a separate tiny little pc I use mostly to offload stuff from my main pc. I've got the main pc monitors on risers so I can fit a couple of scanners under them, and my FRG-7700 under the tiny pc's monitor that is on an arm hovering above the desk...
DeleteIf they were CRTs I'd have a sunburn from being at the focus of all those electron beams :-)
I moved my FT-847s to a file cabinet drawer under my desk to get them off my work surface. I slide the drawer open and they are right there under my hand... although since buying a place in the country, and hearing the difference that makes to noise floor and reception, I haven't been using them much. I'm waiting to get them moved and a tower set up to do anything more than spin the dial occasionally.
Running multiple sdrs looks like fun.
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Surge suppressors are not lightning proof. A tree in my neighbors yard got struck. Took out the PC, the monitor, the Roku on the TV in the living room, and something else which I can't remember right now. May have been the router since I bought a new one at about that time.
ReplyDeleteand also the wires - everything from power cords to cable lines - act like antennas.
DeleteI need to embark on the quest for a new PC next year. Is there a reason you are specifying Intel? I had though AMD had the edge when it came to apps that require a lot of parallel processing - which it looks like your console app does.... (I haven't looked for a couple of years due to budget... PCs got stupidly expensive in the past few years)
ReplyDeleteThe main reason is that I'm trying to emulate the station setup that another ham put together in a presentation I saw. He bought a gaming console that was a Core i9-12K (12 something), water cooled, 64 GB RAM and more. I just can't quite get there on my budget. His opinion was that the i7-9700 or better would probably work, and I'm going to see how it does.
DeleteMore RAM is probably more important than (or as important as) the CPU, since this is multi-threads running signal processing. Lots of number crunching and RAM gets accessed very fast.
Your previous comment about the lightning and all sorts of wires is exactly right and one of our conclusion after that strike. We had stuff in the ham shack that had long wires to it and those were the only things that were damaged. Likewise on the opposite corner of the house, something powered by a wall wart got blown and the only difference between it and other stuff was the power cord was laid out on the floor. Long wires.