Seeking PC recommendations to run ShopBot

[hipstomp]

Hi everyone, I'm not a PC guy and could use some advice from those of you with ShopBot/PC experience. Due to the specifics of my situation, I've got access to a high-end PC on which to do my design work, but I'll need another PC to run the ShopBot Desktop, which is in a different physical location. What do I need to look for in a PC?

The ShopBot website's PC requirements say "Pentium Dual Core or higher," but a PC-savvy acquaintance I spoke with said the "Pentium Dual Core" is several generations old, and asked me a bunch of questions about what the ShopBot actually requires--questions I didn't have answers to. I guess the answers I'm looking for from the community are:

1) What does the PC that's connected to the machine actually need to be able to do, in terms of performance?

2) Can anyone recommend specific PC statistics that I should look for? For example, if we were to put this in car terms, I'm looking for an answer along the lines of "You need a 3.0 liter 24-valve V6 with the turbo," rather than "You want something powerful with good low-end torque."

Apologies if my questions are ignorant or leave out crucial information. I'm so new to this, and so not PC-savvy, that I don't even know what I don't know yet, if that makes any sense.

any help appreciated,

- Nick

[crash5050]

I run my machine on a 299.00 laptop that I purchased from Best Buy. I upgraded the memory from 4 to 8 GB. it has a 200GB HD and is running Winderz 8. The control machine does not have to be near as powerful as the Dual 3.7 Xenon's with 48 GB of ram that I run on my design machine.


David

[MogulTx]

Nick

You relaly don't need anything fancy at all. BUT you should be prepared to strip off ALL the automatic updates and all the peripheral junk that comes with windows. You should also be prepared to keep it OFF the web. You don't want to get a virus. You only really need an older XP system, but you will find those hard to locate these days. So get a simple machine that has nothing on it but an OS and then go to the forum and look up the instructions for shutting off all the programs that secretly run in the back ground. Some of the guys use local networks and send or retrieve their files that way. I juts use a memory stick.

One more caveat: ALWAYS move your file from your memory stick or remote storage onto the drive on the control computer. IF there were to be a lag in the tranfer of info, you could get a goofed up cut... Put it on the drive and run it directly from your control computer.

Its not nearly as hard as it sounds. You will be cutting in no time.

Good luck on it.

[gpinard]

Hi
Here is my take on it. The control computer is not about high horse power. Most any computer will have adiquate computing power. It is about un-interrupted communications between the computer and the Shop Bot. That is why you turn off any thing that can take away the computers attention from delivering the steady stream of instructions to the Shop Bot. Screen savers, automatic updates, anti virus and any thing else it is doing. That is MGM's comment about transferring the file from a thumb drive onto the control computers hard drive, running it from the faster hard drive, not the slower thumb drive. I am using a re-formated dual core windows XP machine with 4 gig of ram, of which the 32 bit XP only sees 3.25 gig. I have striped off everything I could find and it seems to work fine so far.

[hipstomp]

Thanks guys, this is the type of info I was looking for! Looking forward to getting started.

regards,

- Nick