Hi Folks,
As many of you know, with the addition of our second child and my wife staying home, my existing "command post" which was crafted in the play room of our house was lost to my wife and children, and I was banned to the bottom guest bedroom to build my office.
Here are the pictures and descriptions:
Below is the overall setup. I now have only two computers, a desktop and a laptop. The desktop is a Mac Pro Dual Processor quad core 2.8 GHz xeon desktop with 6 GB of RAM and 1.3TB of total drive space. It runs both monitors, the 30 inch Mac monitor for web development, email, and standard computer stuff, and the other 20 inch monitor for radio related computer applications. Most of the radio related computer applications run on Windows XP, which is a Vmware Fusion instance running on the Mac. The laptop is a Macbook Pro 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM.
Below is a rack next to the desk that has most of the radios installed in it - minus the two on the desktop. Between all the cable management and equipment heat, a rack to me made the best sense because I really hate cables everywhere.
Installed in the rack are (2) Icom PCR-2500s, a BCD996T, a MA/COM Jaguar 725M, and a Pro-2096. They feed audio and discriminator outputs to two USB external soundcards, and are fed by two stridsberg multicouplers. There is a 7 port USB hub with 3 USB serial adapters all fed back to the Mac. All audio from all the radios terminate to an NCS 3230 audio console which feeds just, yes just - that's right, 2 speakers. The NCS allows me to mute all radios at one, change their output between both, or one speaker, and multiplex them to just those two speakers. It is a lifesaver.
Below, you see the NCS-3230 in the center, with an Icom R71 and Icom R8500 on the desk. In addition to all the radios in the rack, they also feed the NCS-3230
I am very into computer aided scanning, so I run all the radios through the VMware instance running on the Mac. This is a screenshot of the Windows instance running on the mac and which usually occupies the 2nd screen.
Finally, in the laundry room is a Dell 2950 Server with 2.25TB hard drive space runnning at RAID 50, 12 GB RAM, and 2 quad core xenon processors. This serves as the home file and print server, media server, and staging and test environments for radioreference.com. It runs CENTOS 4 Linux and Vmware Server with about 6 different vmware instances (Windows XP Media Center edition, work related development images, etc)
Enjoy!
As many of you know, with the addition of our second child and my wife staying home, my existing "command post" which was crafted in the play room of our house was lost to my wife and children, and I was banned to the bottom guest bedroom to build my office.
Here are the pictures and descriptions:
Below is the overall setup. I now have only two computers, a desktop and a laptop. The desktop is a Mac Pro Dual Processor quad core 2.8 GHz xeon desktop with 6 GB of RAM and 1.3TB of total drive space. It runs both monitors, the 30 inch Mac monitor for web development, email, and standard computer stuff, and the other 20 inch monitor for radio related computer applications. Most of the radio related computer applications run on Windows XP, which is a Vmware Fusion instance running on the Mac. The laptop is a Macbook Pro 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM.
Below is a rack next to the desk that has most of the radios installed in it - minus the two on the desktop. Between all the cable management and equipment heat, a rack to me made the best sense because I really hate cables everywhere.
Installed in the rack are (2) Icom PCR-2500s, a BCD996T, a MA/COM Jaguar 725M, and a Pro-2096. They feed audio and discriminator outputs to two USB external soundcards, and are fed by two stridsberg multicouplers. There is a 7 port USB hub with 3 USB serial adapters all fed back to the Mac. All audio from all the radios terminate to an NCS 3230 audio console which feeds just, yes just - that's right, 2 speakers. The NCS allows me to mute all radios at one, change their output between both, or one speaker, and multiplex them to just those two speakers. It is a lifesaver.
Below, you see the NCS-3230 in the center, with an Icom R71 and Icom R8500 on the desk. In addition to all the radios in the rack, they also feed the NCS-3230
I am very into computer aided scanning, so I run all the radios through the VMware instance running on the Mac. This is a screenshot of the Windows instance running on the mac and which usually occupies the 2nd screen.
Finally, in the laundry room is a Dell 2950 Server with 2.25TB hard drive space runnning at RAID 50, 12 GB RAM, and 2 quad core xenon processors. This serves as the home file and print server, media server, and staging and test environments for radioreference.com. It runs CENTOS 4 Linux and Vmware Server with about 6 different vmware instances (Windows XP Media Center edition, work related development images, etc)
Enjoy!
ser
