I am curious as to what spec machines you guys are using to run WD. I had a Toshiba laptop (AMD 800Mhz 80MB RAM) to start with, and it ran OK, but had a tendency to crash. I then tried a salvaged P2 300 Tower with 128MB RAM…a slight improvement but a bad com port…now I have a P2 450Mhz with 384MB RAM, its fair to say that this machine was OK, but seems to have slowed down to a crawl after a recording a days worth of data. It seems that I may have to spalsh out for a new machine as all the second hand machines I have tried are not performing adequately… Anyway, I’d be interested in the specs of the machines you guys are using and what works best for you? The problems I have are screen lockups (very common), graphs disapearing while the PC “thinks” before plotting new data and intermittent upload failures.
This probably won’t help you find the minimum spec, but WD works OK on my machine…2.1GHz + 512MB RAM + big hard disk (60GB I think). The machine is also running Digital Atmosphere and a satellite image grabber/processor.
Currently I am using the machine listed in my signature.
I also used another machine, eMachine T2460 AMD Athlon XP 2400+ 1.99GHz 224MB Ram before switching to the current machine and it handled WD and webcam duties.
Also, all of my machines run seti@home http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ clients which use every available cpu cycle that the machine doesn’t use (24x7) and I have not had a problem.
I have not experienced any of the problems you mentioned, and I don’t know what the bare minimum requirements are for running WD. What OS are you running on the Toshiba laptop? I would think it has enough horsepower to run WD…
I have WD runnning on an old PII (?? Mhz) laptop with 128 MB of RAM on Win98. It runs quite OK to be honest, although on ocassions it does spend some time “thinking” before carrying on with its work.
I am running WD Linux variety on a PIII 550 with 256 Mbytes ram with no problems. This box also is running my webserver and a local ftp server. The last time it was down or WD misbehaved badly was 6 months ago. I have successfully run WD windows (Win98) variety on an HP PI 133Mhz laptop 64MBytes ram with success, although, as one poster mentioned, it had to “think” for several seconds during graph creation.
I’m running P3/733’s, but I used P2/233’s before. What OS do you have? Do you have the 3 AM minimize option (under help about) checked, that will keep the memory usage low. If you are using W98 then also use a memory manager like memturbo or ram idle.
My old Toshiba laptop was running Windows XP… and altho it ran WD adequately, there were large pauses while the graphs were drawn which caused WD to miss data especially during storm events. The other major problem it has was during FTP uploads where the machine would hang until the upload was complete…
My current system is an old Compaq Proliant server that I was given by a friend for the WX. The drive is completely formatted and clean and only has Win98 on it with no other apps apart from WD. I seem to have solved the graph drawing issue/problem it was having yesterday by slowing the graphics acceleration setting down in the W98 system settings. So far it has been running OK for the last 24 hours.
I do have a 2.8Ghz Win XP with 512MB RAM machine that is my main PC but I like the idea of a “stand alone” or dedicated WX PC. It looks like you guys all have faster processors than my WX PC and I wonder if WD uses a lot of processor cycles? This machine runs XP and I have had WD running on it flawlessly…which seesm to point to WD needing at least a GHz processor of some type? It would be good if a minimum spec/setup for a WD PC was posted by Brian if he has time?
The other problem I am having is getting my Win98 PC to talk to my Win XP machine… I have tried the XP network setup which worked flawlessly between two XP machines…anyone else have any luck with this? My WD machine needs to be able to see the XP macine to access the net and upload WD data to the weather site… :?
I have not been able to find anything that defines the system requirements for WD or what you are asking for. There is nothing on the web page or the FAQ, nor in the basic manual.
I would think however that you would need at least the following mimum and that any current computer way exceeds this.
[ul][]Win98SE/ME or higher
[]128mb of RAM
[]PIII or equiv AMD or higher
[]1-2 gb’s of free space on the hard drive.
[]1 available serial port card.
[]Network card, ISP Internet connection to publish your data[/ul]
It is possible that less will work but this might be a mimimum to start with.
This would not be a fast machine, and nowdays, just about anything off the shelf will be way beyond this.
The more graphics you do, metars, publishing etc… the more disk space, memory and better network connection you will want.
There have been many examples above of some older machines that work.
Thanks guys, awesome advice as usual. I am awaiting Telecom here in NZ to provision broadband services to us in Feb 05, we live rurally so are lagging behind the rest of the suburban areas…when that is done I will be able to have the WX PC sit online 24/7 and not have to use the the ICS feature on my XP machine…
Looks like I will have to bite the bullet in the future and upgrade to a new dedicated WX PC…
By slowing down the graphics acceleration on the newer P2 450 with the 320MB RAM I seem to have a nice stable WD platfrom now…thanks for of the invaluable advice!!
Now I jst need to work out the W98 - XP networking and ICS functions…
As you can see in my previous post, I live on a farm in rural New Zealand and as such our only nationwide telecoms company does not deliver broadband services to our district. It is scheduled for Feb 2005…as soon as it is avavilable I will be utilising the service…(I already have the router sitting here on the desk!!)
Sorry Niko, I assumed you meant broadband routers… I have researched wireless, but as yet there is no delivery to our area. If you live in a NZ city then there is a plethora of ISP’s offering wireless connectivity, unfortunately, out here in the sticks, the only true alternative to copper is satelite connections which are a little pricey at present… 8O In NZ one company controls all the line infrastructure, and that company will not allow competitors access to it cheaply, so therefore REAL competiiton is near non existent. Unbelieavably, the NZ Govt sold the copper lines (that the taxpayers paid for) and now wonder why rural NZ is being so badly serviced by Telecom NZ… but I digress
I had’nt heard of a dial up router, I assume( :oops:) it is the same as what I already have waiting for Telecom to enable the service at our local exchange. My router utilises ADSL technology and still runs over the copper wire, but just uses a filter to differentiate between the voice and data signals… oh yeah, and the other problem i have is a WIFE who does’nt find the weather as fascinating a sme!!
