Hi All,
I picked up a few more desktops from Uc surplus, 2 are small form factor. I believe they are all made after 2012 and shipped with Windows 7 initially. I3s or I5s. So where all are we putting them? One for the laser cutter for sure. Possibly a second one for there (one per laser?). Or a second one for the 3d printers? Or a replacement for the CNC computer?
Of importance, they will need hard drives. Anyone want to volunteer to pick up 3 ssds and bring them down?
Cheers
Tiffany
Do they have license keys for Windows?
I don’t remember. will check later when I get the chance. If they are replacing existing workstations at the hive though, we should be able to utilize those keys if needbe.
Tiff
When looking at this for a non-profit that I’m working with in Washington DC, I’ve discovered that the Hive is eligible for the Microsoft Product Donations program.
The caveat to this program, which applies for hive13 is that the software cannot be used to make income for a volunteer – so, building things for personal use would be ok, but, members couldn’t sell their items and receive income for it (which, doesn’t apply to my organization in DC, but, may apply for hive13 members).
If there’s enough interest, I’ll gather my notes and share with everyone else.
Ian
I’m not sure I’d be interested in this. I use the hive as an extension of my business toolbox as well as for personal projects and I wouldn’t want such limitations. I think it is something worthy of discussion. I know that I’m not the only one (Coy) that makes for-profit things at the space.
-D
Dave has a good point. Other examples–I’ve done a small amount of sale of 3D printed objects, and Elly has an Etsy store.
2 have a Windows license code on the shells. 1 does not.
Since we are discussing replacing the CNC computer(and potentially moving the CNC to a new location in the corner) I think it would be a great time to get the computer off the cart and onto the wall or a more stationary location. I have had the CNC disconnect from the Ethernet controller before by just barely moving the cart on more than one occasion, I imagine I am not the only person that has had this happen.
I will handle acquisition of hard drives and windows licenses once I take a look at the pc’s specs and whatnot and figure out which ones will be going where. I’ll be down at the space wednesday and will take a look at them then.
We could pretty easily make a box for the CNC computer or even mount it in the lounge on the wall against the CNC area. Then just run the monitor/mouse/keyboard through the wall out to the CNC area.
Against that wall, was what I had in mind as well. If we placed that computer in the lounge it would certainly reduce the space use as well as being a better working condition for the cnc computer (like less saw dusty and stuff).
Yes we could send the monitor cable and a USB cable to a hub through the wall for the keyboard , mouse, pendant.
Just a simple shelf in the lounge and a hole in the wall. We could even get fancy with a grommet to keep sawdust out of the lounge. 
Ian - What time are you going to be down? BRING THE ECC DDR RAM! I have something I can give you that will likely alleviate much of this madness. Shoot me a google chat message or email and lmk.
-D
I have a long (15’ ish?) VGA cable I can donate. It’s attached to a projector kicking around the trunk of my car…
-D
The licenses should work just fine, BTW. Never had a problem with using UC stickers (as long as they’re on the same machine).
L
I can donate a few drives, and the Dell Optiplex series have the Windows key in BIOS (or something similar), I have the original disks that series of PC shipped with, and can gladly donate a few, getting them to a running state with Win-7_Pro_x64 will not be an issue. I also have a few Win-8.1, but only recommend that to folks I truly dislike.
Ian, do you have a recommendation on drive size? My feeling is that smaller is quicker to image and deploy, plus files should be stored on the network, not the local PC. I have 80, 160, 250, 320GB, all of which are freshly wiped. I have half a dozen licenses for Acronis True Image Home (it comes with an SSD that I’ve bought a few of), that can store images to a network share.
Steve
Has anyone ever considered setting up a PXE server in the Hive? It would be an easy way to net-boot installer images for multiple distros (and possibly Windows too).
Andy;
At one point in time (2012? 2013?) there was a PXE server that could net-boot the main Linux distros (Ubuntu, fedora, centos, gentoo), Windows XP and Windows 7, along with a cron job every night to update the internal package cache on all of the servers (that was served via http://, keeping the limited outgoing bandwidth to a minimum).
That would be something that would be Ian B’s forte/area of expertise, and I do not know what the current state of affairs is.
Ian
Oh yeah, we have all sorts of stuff running down there that I discover at random intervals. I’ll have to poke around for that one and see if it’s still going.