12vdc Marine Computers

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by poiu

They look good. I have a 5 year old atom pc and I am getting tired of its poor performance. V. slow. Maybe the new ones are much better. It would be good to play video. Have you tried it with video?

Yes it works fine on a 21 inch monitor and 1920x1080.
The only restriction is linux has not got optimised drivers for the graphic acceleration on the cedar bridge mother board so you need Windows 7.

(Linux works fine with a HD display as long as you not playing a film)

It is playing "Game of Thrones" at the moment.

[poiu]

Originally Posted by noelex 77

Yes it works fine on a 21 inch monitor and 1920x1080.
The only restriction is linux has not got optimised drivers for the graphic acceleration on the cedar bridge mother board so you need Windows 7.

(Linux works fine with a HD display as long as you not playing a film)

It is playing "Game of Thrones" at the moment.

Thanks for that. Win 7 is what I want anyway as I'll be running Maxsea TZ. Now I can move on to the air con pump...

[rgleason]

I have an old Dell 700m with WinXP Home, Celeron M processor 456mb ram 36GB HD.
The Graphics processor is Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME.

Does it make any sense to try to install Linux on this machine and run Opencpn in hopes it would be faster? What about graphics drivers, cd-rom, wifi etc?

Or does it make more sense to try Opencpn in existing WinXP? Would it be so slow as to be unusable? Want to run weather_routing if possible.

Perhaps I should just bag it. Size and portability is appealing.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by rgleason

I have an old Dell 700m with WinXP Home, Celeron M processor 456mb ram 36GB HD.
The Graphics processor is Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME.

Does it make any sense to try to install Linux on this machine and run Opencpn in hopes it would be faster? What about graphics drivers, cd-rom, wifi etc?

Or does it make more sense to try Opencpn in existing WinXP? Would it be so slow as to be unusable? Want to run weather_routing if possible.

Perhaps I should just bag it. Size and portability is appealing.

Bring it to the Smithsonian.. it is worthy of display for history of computers.

[BluegillBoy]

hey, hey, hey. no age discrimination, even for computers. i just got rid of an Apple II. not a IIgs, not a IIe, not a IIc. just a II.

Cost me over $2k in 1978 with 64k RAM (that's right, k not megs) and it loaded programs from cassette tape.

what fun that puppy was tho (back then). you could open it up and hack the hardware. solder away. mod it. brag about it.

ah well, enuf memories. I sold it (non working) for $50 to a guy who wanted to display the case.

but i'd still try OCPN on that Dell, at least in XP first. OCPN isn't highly demanding of computing power. I ran it for a couple years on an old Dell laptop myself.

try and see.

[rgleason]

Thanks, Jedi. I just needed someone to tell me... Its cute, works, but is unuseable for my purposes I guess. I'd like to find something in a
1. Fairly light (<2lbs) tablet
2. Low on watt use.
3. Screen about size of 8x11 paper (maybe just a bit bigger) Good brightness and resolution, but can be dimmed a lot to save energy.
4. Separate Keyboard thin wifi
5. solid state drive, say 50-100gb
6. wifi, maybe bluetooth
7. Linux or windows7
8. Run Opencpn and other nav programs
9. Will connect to nmea, gps and radio.
10. Emal + browser + spreadsheet and docs.

What processor and ram should it have to be useful?
Any suggestions?

Need it by March 2014

[rgleason]

Bluegill, who knows, maybe I'll try 3.2.2 stripped down at first.

[rgleason]

Thinking of possibly a non venting Hartwell processor in a tablet because it would last longer in marine. -- would that be worthwile?

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by rgleason

Thanks, Jedi. I just needed someone to tell me... Its cute, works, but is unuseable for my purposes I guess. I'd like to find something in a
1. Fairly light (<2lbs) tablet
2. Low on watt use.
3. Screen about size of 8x11 paper (maybe just a bit bigger) Good brightness and resolution, but can be dimmed a lot to save energy.
4. Separate Keyboard thin wifi
5. solid state drive, say 50-100gb
6. wifi, maybe bluetooth
7. Linux or windows7
8. Run Opencpn and other nav programs
9. Will connect to nmea, gps and radio.
10. Emal + browser + spreadsheet and docs.

What processor and ram should it have to be useful?
Any suggestions?

Need it by March 2014

You're describing a Macbook Air (different Unix-like flavor), but didn't mention price level yet OCPN runs nicely on native osx but I also still run win7 as virtual machine.

[rgleason]

Installation of Opencpn 3.2.2 on the stripped & cleaned Dell 700m with WinXP Home, Celeron M processor 456mb ram 36GB HD, Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics, runs great with BSB charts. Seems to be very useable.

[jonasaberg]

Rgleason,

If you are out experimenting you may want to try a lightweight (means: configured to run fast) version of Ubuntu like for example Lubuntu.

It will probably run faster than XP since XP has grown with a ton of add-ons since 2004 when your computer seems to have been new. My experience is that a lightweight linux versions runs much much better on old hardware than windows with a zillion updates added. I use windows on new computers and linux on the old and slow ones...

More to read here: lubuntu | lightweight, fast, easier

System Requirements

 We  have done many tests and we've found out that Lubuntu can be installed  on a Pentium II or Celeron system with 128 MB of RAM, but such a system  would not perform well enough for daily use.  
With 256MB - 384MB of RAM, the performance will be better and the system will be more usable. 
With 512MB of RAM, you don't need to worry much. 
The  default "Desktop" installer requires 384-800 MB of RAM (depending on  selected options.)  If you have problems, please use the "Alternate" installer.

[rgleason]

That is VERY helpful. Thank you. Jonasberg, do you think I should be concerned about the cdrom, wifi and graphics drivers, etc? like we used to have to deal with in Windows? ---I no longer have the WinXP install disk, but I think I have some other WinXP install disks if this runs into trouble.

Thanks again.

[Pete7]

Originally Posted by rgleason

Thanks, Jedi. I just needed someone to tell me... Its cute, works, but is unuseable for my purposes I guess. I'd like to find something in a
1. Fairly light (<2lbs) tablet
2. Low on watt use.
3. Screen about size of 8x11 paper (maybe just a bit bigger) Good brightness and resolution, but can be dimmed a lot to save energy.
4. Separate Keyboard thin wifi
5. solid state drive, say 50-100gb
6. wifi, maybe bluetooth
7. Linux or windows7
8. Run Opencpn and other nav programs
9. Will connect to nmea, gps and radio.
10. Emal + browser + spreadsheet and docs.

What processor and ram should it have to be useful?
Any suggestions?

Need it by March 2014

We have a 10" Asus Seashell on board that would meet that spec. Came refurbished for about $150 with Win7. Brilliant bit of kit for carrying around as its so light and 8 hour battery life.

Pete

[capt-couillon]

Have not had time to follow up on my proposed build (a few pages back) due to real world stuff, like dealing with rig and wiring issues..... But, I have been lurking along the thread and with the latest questions about some older laptops and operating systems, I thought I would share a discovery I made while looking for an efficient light weight OS.

The word is Navigatrix.. and it has nothing to do with getting bent over the chart table and whacked with a fender. Navigatrix is a linux OS (based on Ubuntu/Debian) and as far as I am concerned it's the greatest thing since white bread. It was developed and is maintained by a bunch of cruisers spread out from Germany to Panama to Oz and everywhere in between. Out of the box it includes OpenCpn with all the bells and whistles, AirMail, Pactor support Grib downloads AIS and GPS input via virtual com port using GPSD (plug in a usb "hockey puck" gps rcvr with no drivers and it works) Celestial Navigation and all kinds of other cool boat stuff. Runs ok off a 4gb usb stick all by it's lonesome, or you can install side by side with a M$ operating system on the HD. Runs faster on the Hd.

My buddy gifted me an elderly Dell Studio laptop (1535) and Navigatrix boots up in about 20 seconds. Not bad... It also includes Wine for running those Window$ only programs. Have had a few issues, mostly as a result of porting an ISO image over from the old Dell tower rather than a clean install, but my own fault. Good support on the forum, and some of the folks there are actively working on ideas for an ultra low power hardware system... They are discussing an ARM based port once they agree on a serviceable platform so everyone is working on the same hardware. Couple of offshoots to RasPi and BeagleBone. Interesting stuff and interesting folks. If you go to Navigatrix.net/nx0.5 you get a random Navigatrix users web page (hit shift+reload to cycle through to another page).

Blah...blah...blah... as you can tell, I am a bit of a "fan-boy" but after spending months trying to come up with my own lignt weight operating system I was glad to find these guys.

Cap' Couillon

[conachair]

I have a low power PC with dual boot xp/debian. And to be honest can't really tell any difference in speed and the measured power draw seems about the same between the two . Spent a while uninstalling all the add ons from Xp.

A more general plus to building a machine over a laptop is having dedicated hard com ports. Much nicer than those pesky prolific usb/com adaptors