What computer to use

[gerard]

in looking through the SB website, I couldnt find any specs for what the shopbot requires for a computer.

My plan is to do my design work on a machine in my office, save it to a network hardrive, and then access it on a dedicated machine build specifically for the shopbot so my question is, what requirements are there for a computer that will drive the shopbot?

[Gary Campbell]

Gerard...
You dont need really high specs for a dedicated SB computer. One that will run Win XP Pro and have a little ram left over for SB3. There are some posts in the last month or so that discussed disabling of XP services such as automatic updates and the like. A USB 2.0 card is a must. Network is OK. Dongle software is not. Do a search for "computer" in the last 60 days and you should find plenty of info.
Gary

[knight_toolworks]

a gig of ram is good for larger files. that will load 100000 lines of the file. an good usb is a must. I bought a scratch and dent dell that came wuth vista but they have xp drivers for it. only 239.00 and free shipping. 1 gig of ram a 250 gig sata2 drive and a amd duel core chipset.

[voll]

I recently spoke with SB, these are the specs they recomended to run the machine, minimum requirements:
Pentium 3
800 mghz
256 Ram
recommended running XP Pro

I recently bought a refurbished Dell laptop for 385.00 running XP Pro + from:
http://www.dfsdirectsales.com/

[robredick]

Gerrard, just about anything decent will work. I have a 3ghz dell that runs my bot, but my $350 mac mini (last years intel model on sale) booted in windows runs a little smoother. I started with an old KMD computer that didn't even have usb2.0 (I don't suggest that). I design on my Macs and use a little usb dongle to walk back and forth with. Don't spend a fortune 'cause dust is gonna kill it anyway.

[voll]

Oh boy, somebody using a Mac. I have been since I got the SB, then, the leopard upgrade and boot camp2 reaked havoc, which is why Im buying the PC laptop (above), to dedicate to running the SB, it was $385.

I also design on a mac and copy the files over, what kind of experiences have you had? I have been using Vectorworks brought into 'parallels' for creating the files for the SB. That is still working fine and I also flash drive the files over to the PC.

I would like to get boot camp going again for a backup computer, had any luck or tried it with the leopard upgrade?

[robredick]

I am always slow to change. I will not use Vista 'cause XP barely works & I never upgrade the macs until the first revision is made. I learned a lot about patience back in the mid 90's when a 1gig drive was over a thousand bucks and protools seemed to upgrade every other day.

I use parallels just to thumble back and forth, but I always boot to windows to run any of the toys.

I am an Illustrator & SketchUp kinda guy, although I have fallen in love with ArtCam lately.

When you are designing in crazy 3d you need the bus speed and gigs of RAM, but to run the bot, anything that seems mediocre as a graphics machine will be overkill. It may depend on how big of a cutting file you have. The longest file that I have had was 49 mins, but some of these fellas have 17 hour part files. Perhaps one of them will chime in if you need more speed for that..

[myxpykalix]

I have a laptop that is about 1 yr old and have run some carving files that took 9 hours or more and have not had a problem. I think what you need to be more aware of is processor speed as opposed to graphics speed when just cutting.

[gerard]

Thanks for the great discussion on this, I too have a mac, which I use as my day to day computer, bt resort to PC for running a laser engraver, and will do the same for the shopbot, as much as I hope to keep the dust to a minimum in the shop, I doubt I can keep it from taking out a computer here or there, and would rather have it take an inexpensive one.