Re: Need a PC for HA ...

[David Gumbrell <david.gumbrell@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 2/14/06, Chris Hunter <cjhunter@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> We've 'Macs, but 'looks like I'm going to have to get a PC to run
Cortex
> linked to an Idranet ... any suggestions, please, for which one of the
> many to go for ... needs to be reliable, for continuous operation ...
> and be able to connect in some way with our 'Mac network ... maybe I
> should wait for the 'Mini to go Intel, and load it with Windows ?
> 'wonder if it's possible / practical to run both Windows & Tiger
on the
> same machine, simultaneously ... OSX being based on Unix, and Unix
> having pre-emptive multi-tasking capabilities, maybe it would be
> possible ... ???
>
> Chris
>

It's going to depend a lot on where you plan to site the PC, how you
plan to access it, and what Cortex features you plan to use
(especially voice recognition and CCTV). I doubt Mac Mini hardware is
fundamentally more reliable than modern PC board.

I think trying to use virtualisation to run two OS's for Cortex will
break the KISS principle -- Cortex wants unfettered access to the
serial ports and virtualisation may break that. I haven't heard of
anyone running either OSX on non-Apple hardware or Windows on Apple
hardware yet, but I'm sure some hackers are going to prove me wrong
eventually.

Plan on dedicating a PC to Cortex and not using it for anything else.
I haven't checked, but you may be able to use the Cortex bridging
features to split the automation across two PCs, one running the
basics, the second doing the CCTV stuff you've mentioned before.

Personally, I built my own based on a PD-10000 mini-ITX board. You can
get mini-ITX's that will take faster Intel processors, but cooling is
more of an issue. I'm not running CCTV or speech recognition, so I
don't know whether the PD-10000 is up to that.

HTH

--- Gumby