Control computer

[COWBOY1296]

I KNOW THERE ARE A GAZILLION COMPUTERS OUT THERE BUT I MIGHT BE IN NEED FOR ONE. I NEED A GOOD CONTROL COMPUTER DESKTOP TO RUN MY SHOPBOT BUDDY. ANY SUGGESTIONS, INCLUDING PROCESSORS MEMORY AND ECT.

[Adrian]

The main thing is that you don't really need anything particularly powerful to run a CNC. I run my ShopBot PRS Alpha 96x48 on a Dell Optiplex 745, intel core 2 duo with 2gb memory that cost me about £75 to buy over a year ago. Before that I was running happily on a single CPU celeron machine but the RAM failed on that one.

I run Windows XP on it as there's no need for anything more. If you want to run a more modern version of Windows then you may need a more powerful PC for that.

The most important thing is to make sure that you don't have lots of background programs running on the PC trying to take resources away from the job of controlling the CNC. PC's at this level are so cheap it's best to leave it to do one task and one task only.

[jimwill2]

I agree with Adrian, a dedicated computer that doesn't have to be all that powerful. I bought an XP referb' from Microcenter for $180 but I don't do anything else with it.

[COWBOY1296]

I AM KEEPING MY FINGERS CROSSED.
The old computer that i have is a dell 8250 that is dedicated solely to the shopbot. the only two other things plugged into usb, other then the bot, are the mouse and small speaker. I run black vipers bare bone settings. I found this morning that the computer usb that is plugged into the shopbot might be defective. i changed the usb that i use and am running a complete rerun of a file that i had problems with yesterday. for you shopbot owners a speed test was run on this new connection and is at 73 %. so hopefully i was premature in looking for a new desktop.
thanks for the replies

[Adrian]

73% is exactly what I get on my 'bot so hopefully you should be good to go.

[Leo]

The computer I use to run my router cost me $40.

I was a computer that my company was getting rid of, because they upgraded all the old computers.

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING fancy about it. It's just some old xp desktop computer. I think it had 2 gig ram, but I am sure the machine will run on a computer with 1 gig or even 512 ram.

The computer to run a CNC machine is a very small problem.

[COWBOY1296]

for now i was premature with the question. apparently it was a faulty usb connection. i have rerun the file with in excess of 200000 lines with no problem. checked the connection speed at the end and it is consistantly 73.2. so for now i am good to go, but thanks for the input.