Techni-Systems - Your Computer Based Industrial Control Source

A typical control computer system will consist of: Server-class 64-bit mainboard AMD Athlon64 CPU 1024mb of certified Kingston DDR memory Nvidia Geforce7300 Dual-output PCIE Video Card Twin 120gb Seagate Barracuda SATA hard drives Sony DVD-R/RW drive 1.44mb floppy drive InWin all steel mid-tower case with 3 fans, one with a replaceable and cleanable filter element Powerman AMD approved 460-watt power supply Zoom Telephonics external controller-based V.92 modem Logitech pure optical mouse Keytronics keyboard 19" LCD color monitor Tripp-Lite 1000VA UPS with AVR Microsoft Windows XP Pro Symantec PCAnywhere or NetOp remote control software AVG virus scanner

So what is all this stuff? Well, let's starts with the mainboards we use. We only use top level mainboards from Gigabyte, MSI, Tyan and SuperMicro. Other manufacturers talk about reliability, but these boards deliver. Besides their reliability, these mainboards have excellent expandability. Take for example the MSI K9NDiamond board: Compatible with Athlon64 processors up to the current 6400+, including the newest FX chips Support for DDR 800mhz RAM 3 PCIe and and 3 PCI expansion slots Dual channel ATA133/100/66 master mode EIDE controller and 6 SATA300 ports 6 USB 2.0 (480mbps) and 2 i1394 (400mbps Firewire) ports Integrated gigabit ethernet controller (1000/100/10baseT)

So why AMD? There are retailers that will tell you Intel processors are more reliable than AMD. Years ago we switched from Intel to AMD because of their superior math performance. After several years and hundreds of systems later WE HAVE YET TO SEE A DEAD AMD PROCESSOR. We have recently done performance tests on various Intel processors and found that AMD still has the upper hand in math performance running our control software.

Do you really need 1024 megs of RAM to run our software? Not really. But it's nice to have a little extra room for any other applications you wish to run. We also like to make sure that no hard disk memory swapping will take place on these computers so that the hard drives will have to work as little as possible.

What's a TwinHead video card? Well, simply put it's a video card that has connections for two monitors. In a typical situation you would have our control software running on one monitor while you used the other one for email, office apps, or whatever else you use the computer for. The video cards we use are fairly high-performance, but not so much so that they require more than just a heatsink for cooling. We've found that video cards that require a heatsink/fan combination tend to fail much sooner than cards that need a heatsink alone, so of course we go with what's the most reliable.

Why two hard drives? The motherboards we use have integrated RAID hard drive controllers. The two hard drives are mirrored with one another so if one fails you'll be alerted to the failure and the system will continue to run your plant. Hard drive failures just happen. Anyone that's been around computers for very long will find that out. We do use the best hard drives that we can find, but because they are a mechanical device there is a chance of failure. We do recommend that hard drives be replaced at no greater than a 5 year interval.

Do you need a DVD burner? The DVDR/RW drives we install in our systems are a very easy way to back up your data. While having two hard drives in a RAID array is very secure for your precious data, if the computer is stolen what good does that do you? Off-site storage of data can save alot more than the cost of a computer, and we make that easy to do. Our control software has it's own easy to use backup solution to help you with this.

Why 3 fans in the computer case? Because a fan is a mechanical device, it can fail with time. If any two of the fans in one of our computers fail, the system will still have enough airflow through the case to keep running. There's two 80cm fans on the back of the case, each that operate at a reduced speed to enhance their reliability. The front fan is a large 92cm which flows almost twice the amount of air of the back two fans combined, and it has a replaceable / cleanable filter element. This combination produces a positive pressure inside the computer case made up of clean, filtered air.

Why an external modem? Well, many years ago we got tired of having problems with internal modems. The modems would die, and on-site replacement of the modem was always a hassle. So we switched to external modems to make replacement easier. Guess what?- since that time we haven't had any of our modems fail! Apparently external modems are built much better than internal ones, so we stuck with it. It's also nice to have all the status indicators of an external modem to know what's going on with your telecommunications.

What's a pure optical mouse? If you've ever seen a mouse that had a very bright, red light on it's underside, that's a pure optical mouse. It's a mouse that has no mouse ball, but instead has a simple CCD optical sensor that continuosly 'looks' at the surface it's on to sense movement. Dirt, dust, sand, grime all have no effect on this type of mouse.