Ok, im in a study block and bored so, i decided to start this;

What Operating System(s) do you currently have/use?


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Mine;
Main OS: Windows Vista Ultimate
Virtual Machines: Windows XP Professional
98
2000
95
Ububtu 8.10

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POST NOW!!!

Older laptop has 2000 pro; Kaspersky
Newer laptop has XP; Kaspersky

Desktop runs XP; Norton
Office desktop (on server) has some version of XP.

Two on XP Pro, my wife's and my primary machines.
My backup machine in the drawer under this one, the file/fax/scanner/weather server, in the back room and 2 media servers, one in the entertainment center and one out in the pool bar, are running W/98.
They are all on the network.
Two MP3 players in the vehicles are running DOS 6.3

What kind of software are you using in your entertainment center? One good thing about Vista, is that Windows Media Center is built-in starting with the Home Premium version... But the system requirements are pretty rediculous.

MP3 players running DOS? You have boxes in your car?

The machine in the entertainment center runs W/98. It usually just plays MP3s but I also stream and archive shows from the ReplayTV there and I used to use it for burning DVDs before I got a regular DVD recorder.

The car and truck players are old P166 class machines running DOS 6.3 and MPXPLAY. If I could find a better player I would get on. I like the key pad interface.
That is also the software on the tiki bar machine out by the pool. The "key pad" is the 3W1 Seeburg wallbox.

How do you keep an area like that clean and dry during the stormy season? Being from the Pacific NW, I can't imagine having something like that in my back yard... It would be covered in moss. Anyway, it looks like a nice setup...

I am currently running 25' S-Video & audio cables from the computer under my desk (Athlon64X2 6000+) to my TV as the DVR, but am going to put it on another box (P4 3.0) next to the TV. Vista and Media Center run great on the Athlon64X2, we'll see about the P4. I may have to keep the annoying long cables, and having to crawl under the desk to switch out the jacks for my headphones.

I'd be really interested to see how your car setup works... I have been considering moving my Linux box (Duron 1100) into the trunk for use as a mobile grid computing platform, just to say that I can/have. I suppose I could do other things with it, such as MP3 player or GPS, but that can easily come later. Are the boxes just standard cases, or something special? I would be concerned with vibration and jarring while driving down the road. My biggest concern is power; I have an inverter but my car's small battery is pretty easy to kill. I would need to devise a scheme to have the computer turn off shortly (say 15 minutes) after the engine has stopped, and then start it up again with the ignition.

(Getting back on topic):
Work: Windows XP Pro SP2
Home: Mac OS X 10.5.6, Ubuntu 9.04, Windows Vista Home Premium x64 SP1, Windows XP Pro SP3.

I still have copies of Win95, 98, ME and 2000 as well as nearly every version of MacOS. I started with computers using ProDOS on an Apple IIe, and MS-DOS 4/5 on a 286. Then MacOS (System) 6, 7, Win 3.11 and so on.

I don't really claim to take sides in the Mac/Windows/Linux argument, as you can see I use all three on various computers. In fact, I try to enjoy the differences and similarities of all OSes. I have, however, converted to Mac OS for my daily home use, as I bought a MacBook Pro. Even though I often regret and am saddened by the price disparity with the Apple stuff, I did it because I can dual-boot MacOS with nearly any other x86 OS. I currently use XP Pro SP3 for this, booting fresh from the XP partition for games and a few other rare instances and using VMWare Fusion for most everything else.

FreeBSD Unix. (3 laptops, desktop, multiple servers)
XP (1 desktop - mainly for youtube and windoze-only apps)
NetBSD (HP Jornada 680 palmtop - bedside email terminal)

The machine for the tiki bar is actually in the garage on the other side of the wall with long cables. The monitor seems OK tucked up in that corner in spite of the weather. I do go through one every 3 or 4 years but I am not sure they last much longer than that anyway. I get them used from online surplus operations.

In the cars I have regular systems but I do go for as small a case as I can find and hack the board in that fits.
In my F150 I have an Acer 2195 that is about 4" tall. It stands up behind the seat.
The Prelude has a LAN branded server case that is really only about 2.5" tall with a socket 7 AT board hacked in it.
I took out the back seat coushion, put the machine on the floor pan on some carpet and pad and folded the seatback down over it. Nobody over 3' tall could sit back there anyway. I did put some blocking under the seatback so it will breathe and to take the load of the 10 bags of concrete I might throw back there off the PC.
They run on inverters straight off the "ignition" terminal so they go up and down with the key. Since I am not really writing to the disk, I haven't had a problem just dumping them. DOS is pretty good about that anyway, although the W/98 machine in the entertainment center and tiki bar get dumped too.
The advantage of the DOS systems is they are "key on" to "music" in about 10 seconds. The car systems run blind, no monitor. I just have a key pad to select songs by number, "next", "back", "repeat" or it defaults to random play.
That is about all the distraction I want in a car.
The tiki and house machines have a monitor and you can scroll to see what you want. That is it it the upper corner of the pic.

I never worried about bouncing these things around. When I was at IBM they did a study of hard drives and vehicles for the army. If the driver can take the shock, so will the hard drive. Just be sure the machine is fastened down. The secondary shock of jostling around is far greater than the shock transmitted through the vehicle body.

In my case two of the home computers use Vista Home Basic, one uses XP Home, for work have XP Professional on one laptop and Windows 95 on another laptop. Before anyone says anything the second laptop is kept on 95 on purpose as it is the easiest one I know of to block out to use some programing languages such as Pascal and Assembly to communicate with some of the older machines I deal with.

Work: 2000
Laptop: Win95
Desktop 1: Win98 SE
Desktop 2: WinXP Pro SP3

Noderaser,
Consider a Schmitt trigger circuit instead of a timer for your auto circuit. Turn off a little above 12 volts and on just below your regulated voltage. A timer wouldn't make up for different loads or environmental conditions.

Greg,
Way to go!

Joe

I was looking at the relays used to turn audio amps on/off... One of those would probably work, although for the type of activity I have in mind (grid computing), I would need a safe shutdown. The simplest solution would probably be amplifier relay > inverter > UPS > computer, using a UPS that reports power status to the computer--shutting it down when inverter power is switched off. I would have to buy a new UPS, as the one I have under my desk has problems with its status reporting feature. This is one of those projects I've been thinking on for a while, and have never actually done anything about.

If you use a laptop it will usually have the ability to detect low battery and shut down.

If you use a desktop, just wire in a parallel power switch and power it down before you shut off the car ... if you can remember.
Unless you are actually doing something, most PCs will tolerate just being turned off. My wife's standard procedure for any computer glitch is pull the plug.

Windows XP PRO office & laptop, win 2000 shop, redhat on IRLP node 3962

Work: XP Pro
Home desktop 1 & 2: XP Pro
File server: Win98
Laptop 1: Win98 Lite
Laptop 2: Win95

Working PCs only, I imagine? In that case:

Work PC: XP
Main PC: XP
Son's PC: XP
Daughter's PC: XP
Wife's Laptop: XP
Work Laptop: XP
My Laptop: XP
Son's Laptop: Win95
Cellphone: Win Mobile
Old Kids PC: XP
Wife's old Laptop: Win98
My old PC: Dos 6.2, thanks to my dad deleting the OS in his botched attempt to delete his files when he gave it back to me for the kids to use. To my chagrin, I discovered I only have win95 and win98 "update" disks, which means I'd have to install win 3.1, upgrade to 95 (both via floppy disk), which only then would let me upgrade that to 98. It's a Pentium 100MHz with 32mb RAM and was my first "real" PC in college, so has a lot of sentimental value. I installed DOS on it so I could troubleshoot, but even the 400MHz machine the were using was painful, so I just bought the kids new computers for christmas instead.

...Wow, looking back up at that list, I've got a lot of computers, lol

Steve I can send you a real W/95c disk that will cut out a step or two on that machine. (or I could send you a W98 copy or even just the .ISO you could burn yourself)
Any good set of numbers will work with any disk of that type.

Since you paid for a W/98 I do not see an ethical/moral question in getting back to what you paid for quickly.

I just had a disk crash on one of my W/98 machines so I am going to have to dig up the SP2 update myself. If I can still find it I could send that too.

I'm mainly a Mac guy so hold your fire!

Main computer/laptop: Core 2 Duo Macbook w/ OS X 10.5.6
Backup laptop/backyard MP3: G4 iBook w/ OS X 10.3.9
Light Room MP3 player: G3 iMac w/ OS X 10.3.9
iTunes Server: G3 iMac w/ OS X 10.3.9
Powermac G3: OS X 10.3.9
Powermac 6100: OS 8.5
Whole family/downstairs computer: Emachines w/ Xubuntu and Vista Dualboot

Ian A.

Thanks, Greg, but I'm not terribly concerned about it. I'd wanted to give each of the kids their own PC (set the 400MHz and 100MHz up for it), but I knew it was just a stop-gap until they got older and needed more power. I just hadn't realized how quickly that day would come, lol... those flash games on playhouse disney, nick jr and PBS kids websites take a lot more processing power to run than you might think! The 400MHz machine just couldn't cut it, and I knew it'd be futile with my old 100MHz. They've each got 1.8GHz computers now

I'm got XP slipstreamed on a disk with SP2 that I use on my machines, but didn't want to try to put XP on a PC that old.

XP should be fine on the 400 MHz, as long as you've got enough (minimum 256 MB) RAM. We're still pushing a couple of Pentium II 350's w/384 MB of RAM, and they're fine for email, Word and basic browsing. Heck, we've got around 100 Pentium II 233's w/128-256 MB of RAM running Windows 2000... Get lots of complaints about them being slow, but you have to give the hardware credit for running reliably for 12 years.

The "kid games" are usually a lot more CPU intensive than real "computing".
If people could get over the need for a cartoon interface, I bet most businesses could be run on an XT class 4.88 mz machine with DOS. (inventory, payroll, billing etc)

I guess I am too old. I came up in a world where big corporations ran on 16k machines with 11.5 microsecond clocks and they still got all their bills out on time.
(on 1100 line a minute printers)

Most of my computers have a home-grown derivative of Slackware Linux. One runs EasyPeasy which is a derivative of Ubuntu. I also have Solaris, OpenBSD, and Windows XP available if I juggle some equipment around.

I've been using linux for a long time. I've tried Red Hat, OpenSUSE, and Mandrake/Mandriva, but I'm now a fan of Ubuntu. At first I used dual boot with Windows 98 and linux and got some experience with system failures. Linux was first and after an hour on the internet I had it running without any data loss. Then, the windows partition crashed and I never could get it back. So I started using linux for everything.

• Main desktop here: Windas XP.(runs all the day to day stuff)
• Laptop 1: Windas XP.(runs my SelCall decoder and other scanning functions)
• Laptop 2:(In the house); Windas XP.
• 2nd desktop in here: Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn.(Code writing computer)
• 3rd desktop in here: Mandriva. (runs my weather station and a few other Ham radio applications)
• Work Desktop: Windas Vista Full Noise.
• Work truck laptop:Windas XP.

Greg, Nice setup. Give me some good advice on wireless speakers for my gazebo. I can't run speaker wires. Thanks John

I am not a huge fan of wireless speakers but I have some. They are the RCA 900mz type but they seem to drift out of tune over time. I usually end up tweeking the tuning each time I use them. I really use the headset more than the speakers. I have a couple pairs (same model) and one is definitely better than the other (range and stability).
I really prefer running shielded (ground one end only please) twisted pair feeding a local amp. This seems to be the best way to get good, reliable sound.

Configuration for my current Workstation:

Machine details:
Intel board (Dell OEM),
CPU: Intel Pentium E2160 (Dual-Core),
CPU Speed: 1.80 GHz; Board Speed: 800 MHz,
Chipset: ICH9 + Intel G33,
DRAM: 4.0 GB, 800 MHz DDR2 (4x1.0 GB DIMMs),
Controllers: SATA (4 controllers) - RAID Level 1,
On-Board Audio, video, MODEM, NIC, Drive Controllers,
Fixed Disks: 2x 320 GB SATA Hard Drives - RAID 1 connected,
Removable Media: 1x CD-RW / DVD-RW +/- (SATA),
Expansion Bus: PCI (2.3, Express 1.0A); SATA 1.0 & 2.0; USB 2.0,
Display: 19.0" LCD Flat Panel.
"Pizza box" Desktop case; Dell Inspiron.
USB connected Mouse + Keyboard (cordless logitech mouse, receiver on USB).

Operating System + Applications (major / primary usage):

O.S.: Win XP Pro, SP 3.xxx,
Apps:
* AutoCAD R. 2005,
* MS Office 2007 (Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher & Word... need to get Access ASAP!),
* Adobe Acrobat Std. version 9.0xxx,
* Paint Shop Pro ,ver. 7.0xxx,
* Circuit Maker ver. 5.0xxx (PSPICE app),
* Bassbox Pro + Xover 3.0 (Audio Design app),
* Mozilla Browser (Firefox 3.5.2),
* Thunderbird E-mail client (ver. 2.0.0.16),
* Roxio CD/DVD utility (plan to upgrade ASAP).

LAN:
Printing (TCP/IP connected Peripherals):
* HP6P Laser Printer,
* HP 720C Color Printer,
* HP 450C Wide Format Color Printer (max. ARCH D size media).

Additional W/S:
* My Wife's local machine (base is the same Dell as mine, apps different),
* Server machine (File / Server),
* Aux. W/S # 1 - located in same room as the above machines -used for backup, or visitors,
* Aux. W/S # 2 - located in the House.

Gateway: 2-Wire ADSL / Ethernet 100mbps, Wifi capable (Wifi disabled).

Ethernet: All equipment "Wired" per EIA/TIA 568B scheme (used 568B because that was commonly specified at the time I was doing Data work!).
Speed: based at 100mbps,
Ethernet Switch: 100/1000mbps, 8 ports (only... need to cascade an additional switch soon!).

My Wife's Machine came with Vista Home version, which was "Downgraded" to XP Pro by us.
She could not do anything productive with Vista; either could not install an application, or could not run an installed application.

I will keep the list to the current setups, so the length of this reply is small.
A brief description of past configurations:

1st and 2nd Machines: TRS-80; Models 1 & 2 -O.S. = TRSDOS ,
Following Machines:
* 8088 Based Machine - MS DOS (ver. 3.3?), or PC DOS, ver. ? (old IBM OS, pre OS2/WARP),
* 80286 machine, w/ MS DOS 4.0,
* 80386sx 16MHz machine, w/ MS DOS 5.0 (later upgraded to MS DOS 6.22) + Windows 3.0 (quickly upgraded to Windows 3.1, then later to 3.11 WFW),
* 80486dx 66MHz machine w/ MS DOS 6.22 & MS Windows 3.11 WFW,
* P5 166MHz machine w/ Win 95 (all service packs for W95),
* PII 266MHz (3 of these!), w/ Win 95 SER 2.5, later Win 98 SER 2.0),
* One PIII Pizza Box, w/ 1st release of XP,
* Two Dell Pizza Boxes w/ P4 CPUs, O.S. = XP Pro.
* Countless Machines dealt with during work! ranging from 8088s to P4s; O.S. include MS DOS, PC DOS (never dealt with DR DOS), OS2/WARP + "Merlin", Win 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, NT 3.5, 4.0, & 2000, XP - Pro.

Dealt with IBM System 4700 a lot, prior to the Y2K Upgrade Compliance (Banking Industry).
This was a Terminal-Based System (Controllers driving "Dumb Terminals" at Teller Stations).

Those were the days! I sure learned a lot about Machines between 1988 and 1995!

The 80486dx machine I had was an IBM tower case PC (System 70?), with MCA (Micro Channel Architecture).
For those whom do not know about MCA, this was the first "Plug & Play" type expansion bus architecture -of course, developed by IBM.


Scott

Just a little OT but the surplus outfits are dumping XP pro machines for $40 and up with the XP license (P4 machines 1.8Gz - 2.4Gz. If you are looking for a moderate powered work station it is not a bad deal.
I bought a Compaq the other day for $68 2.4Gz with a gig of memory (upgrade) 40g drive and XP pro. I am going to use it for a media server.

El-Bump'o!!!

Scott

I got that new (to me) Compaq P4 2.8mz ($40) going in my TV cabinet. It is strange to have a 40 inch monitor (my wife's new TV) but with a wireless desktop it is pretty cool.
I am trying to figure out how to get internet TV on it now. It is on my network.

Windows 3.1 was my first

Used Windows 98 pretty much until the drive failed, motherboard and power supply are still good.

Windows Xp is what I use now