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Garage upgrade 2.0, touchscreen industrial computer

2turbotoys

Salaminizer
Joined
Nov 13, 2007
Location
Reading pa
I scored a touchscreen industrial computer for my garage, originally running Windows 7 Pro, it had a bad hard drive. Installed a new 500 gig drive, and hoping it can run Windows 10. Ordered a wireless card for it. Plan is to put it on an arm that folds down from the ceiling and be able to rotate it. Anyone know of such an arm? It does have some weight to it, maybe 20 lbs. The face is 1/8" aluminum plate.
Serial ports, check. Two PCI slots, USB 3, 17"? screen etc...

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Please say you got a solid state. It can probably run Windows 10. Just dont overdo it with what you want it to do. It was never designed to be run at 100% all the time. It will get hot and shorten its lifespan.
 
I just used a 500 gig drive sitting around. Its very easy to swap out whenever I want. All my other computers are solid state so I will convert this one after I make sure the thing works ok. This is the fan cooled model and won't be in an enclosure so it should be fine. Thanks for the tip though, I'll monitor the temps and add bigger fans if needed. It's just going to be used to play videos when in the garage.
 
Obligatory "install Linux" reply.

Cool hardware. Do you know how it was originally used? How much RAM/CPU? Video card?

My first thought for an arm would be the kind of things used in patient rooms in hospitals to hold monitors, etc.
 
Haha, I won't be installing Linux, Windows can handle the job fine. I like Linux, and I know why others do, I'm just not that familiar with using it. I will boot it up soon with a Linux disk just to check out the specs.
Speaking of the specs, I don't know what they are. The model number doesn't show up anywhere, probably because its a bit older, and it hasn't been powered up yet. I saw 4 gigs of ram in there, motherboard is an Intel D33025 (LGA 1155 or Socket H2) which means its pre 2013.
Tomorrow I should get the VGA to DVI adapter it needs and I'll fire it up on Linux.

Edit: I'm trying to find one of those arms like from a doctors office but no luck yet...
 
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Idk, as long as it can play Amazon Prime it's fine, I won't be doing much else with it. It used to control a large portion of a major city's water supply pumps haha, so it should be fine.
 
If we are being specific, yes. It's an operator interface terminal. It interfaced with PLC's, housed all the static IP addresses for everything, ran the diagnostic programs, collected data, sent out alarms, etc, I deal with these all the time at work. Usually I have to "recover" passwords, figure out why this thing isn't talking to that thing, set up antique COM ports and crap like that. This is a bit nicer for me than most OIT's because it's not using an embedded version of Windows.
If you got the it fired up on the old hard drive it would immediately shut down most of that citys water supply due to the static IP's, they are reused on the new OIT, I was warned not to try to use it with the original drive because that situation happened once and it wasn't good.
 
+1 for the shop screens though
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old house tv, smart. dyno graphs and cleetus look great up 'air. the screen for the computer (the small 27 inch job down there) is on an articulated arm, it'll spin around as much as the cables will allow for.
 
Nice! I wanted to mount mine from the ceiling and be able to push it up outta the way, but that is looking like way too expensive. "patient room" turned out to be the term I needed for google searches but I don't care $600+ worth, need a different plan. I had a 32" TV to do this with but that takes up too much room. Amazon doesn't have what I'm looking for unfortunately.
 
Nice! I wanted to mount mine from the ceiling and be able to push it up outta the way, but that is looking like way too expensive. "patient room" turned out to be the term I needed for google searches but I don't care $600+ worth, need a different plan. I had a 32" TV to do this with but that takes up too much room. Amazon doesn't have what I'm looking for unfortunately.

if it's not too heavy you might be able to fab something up with garage door springs, some wood (or metal pipe, whatever) and a locking mechanism of some sort (alignment holes, that sort of thing), then you could mount it on a swivel from the ceiling, just put a travel stop so you don't twist the **** out of your cables lol
 
Try a home depot search for something like: "TV Mount" or "Monitor Arm", and see if it can be adapted to your needs.
 
A flatscreen TV mount should be able to do what you need. The tricky part will be mounting it since it looks like you're using a totally custom case.
Great project ��
 
Thanks! I've been looking at a lot of different arms, I have to weigh this thing, probably at least 30 lbs so that's a small issue. As far as mounting, it was made to go in an electrical enclosure door, so I just need a metal plate with the proper sized hole cut out. The monitor clamps into that from behind, then drill holes in the plate to line up to a couple of the mount holes, or redrill mount holes, whichever is easier.
Hopefully get it turned on tonight...
 
They used to make arms that physically held crt screens, you saw them in hotels, doctors offices etc. It would hold the weight if you could support it from the bottom. The hard part will be finding one as I doubt anyone manufactures them any longer.
 
Ah, someone must have used ones somewhere. I'll look into that.

My Linux test isn't going well. I can't boot from usb, and there is no options to get to the bios. The easiest thing to try now is making a bootable disk I guess. I kind of doubt the manufacturer will be any help but I may shoot them an email.
 
Progress! Needed to bypass the monitor, hooked it up to an old TV. That allowed me to get to the boot menu, I got Windows 10 Pro key for $8.80 on eBay, made a flash drive ready, and its working so far.

Windows 10 Pro works, hopefully it can find touchscreen drivers.

Computer specs:
Intel i3-2120 CPU @ 3.30 GHz 3.30 GHz
4 gigs RAM
64 bit

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Test rig haha

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I haven't got it online yet, but Windows 10 Pro is working well, on the built in monitor. Touchscreen functions dont work yet, and the colors are very yellow. I think the onboard mobo graphics are messed up so I am going to get a graphics card.
The problem is it has a riser card for the PCIE slots, with only 1 extension card. It needs a second one so I can run graphics card plus a wireless card. After a 45 minute search, I found one on Newegg, $1.95 free shipping from China. How do they make and ship this to me for $2?!?
Ordered that and a wireless card. Sorting thru the maze of graphics cards now.
 
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