Upgrading my Tree

[Tom Curran]

Good morning! I am upgrading my Tree Journeyman 320 to Camsoft controls, and will need to get a PC to run it with.

I am a MAC person, and the thought of getting a PC makes me shiver. However, the simplest route is to get myself a PC.

That said, what kind of PC do I get, and does it need special bus board or connectors, or a certain amount of RAM or video cards, anything out of the ordinary I should look for?

Thanks,

Tom

[Karl_T]

I've used several different PCs. The only issue I've had is with the case. The Galil card is huge and doesn't fit in the desktop size. You need a tower. Unless you get one of the very old Galil 17X0 cards, you just need a PCI bus for cards. I'd get one with three open PCI slots.

I'd be sure and get one with two hard disks. Once you get camsoft running right, CLONE your hard disk to the other one. Then if (when) anything gets corrupted it only takes a second to switch and be and running again.

I run Camsoft on a 2.8 GHz P4. Its plenty fast. It also has 512 Ram, seems to be plenty. Note, I don't run anything else on the control computer.

You'll need a CD rom and the old floppy disk drive, not too common on today's computers.

For OS, I use windows XP. Don't get Vista. Camsoft still reccomends '98 and ME if you can find an old computer so you don't have trouble with device drivers. For XP, you need to disable automatic updates, and not have virus software running. This makes the machine vulnerable to internet hackers. Either disconnect from the internet or set up some sort of firewall. I've used something called MAC ID filtering on my router with good success.

Karl