Recommended PC?

GNU Radio
1

I am just starting out with Gnu Radio and want to purchase and/or
build a PC that will cause me the fewest extraneous problems. I figure
that those of you using Gnu Radio may have opinions on the matter but
I was unable to find anything in the archives.

For the RF-IF, I plan on getting Matt E.'s USRP. (By the way, I
design with FPGAs.)

Now for the questions:

  1. Laptop or Desktop: I would prefer to use a laptop but not if it
    adds to the pain.

  2. Processor: 32bit or 64bit, AMD or Intel — any land mines here?
    The FAQ talks about speed (1 to 2+ GHz); is this outdated?

  3. USB interface: to minimize the bottleneck, the motherboard or USB
    PCI card must not constrain the bandwidth further.

  4. Linux distribution: I am currently using Ubuntu but is another
    choice going to cause fewer problems?

  5. Anything else I missed?

Thanks,

–
Bob Collins
Sunnyvale CA USA

2

On Saturday 19 August 2006 09:27, Bob Collins wrote:

  1. Laptop or Desktop: I would prefer to use a laptop but not if it
    adds to the pain.

A Dell Inspiron 9400 laptop with a 2GHz Centrino Duo which works fine
here.

cheerio Berndt

3

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 04:57:47PM -0700, Bob Collins wrote:

I am just starting out with Gnu Radio and want to purchase and/or
build a PC that will cause me the fewest extraneous problems. I figure
that those of you using Gnu Radio may have opinions on the matter but
I was unable to find anything in the archives.

For the RF-IF, I plan on getting Matt E.'s USRP. (By the way, I
design with FPGAs.)

Good, we can use more of those :wink:

Now for the questions:

  1. Laptop or Desktop: I would prefer to use a laptop but not if it
    adds to the pain.

I use both. For traveling, demos, etc I run on my laptop. I have two
that I’m very happy with: An older IBM X31 (1.4 GHz Pentium M) and a
newer Lenovo (nee IBM) X60 (a 1.8 GHz Core Duo). I’ve got 2GB of RAM
in the X60. I’m running Mandriva on the X31, SuSE on the X60.

Regarding desktops, I use a dual Opteron 248 running SuSE, but also
have a P4 and a dual Athlon that I test on sometimes.

  1. Processor: 32bit or 64bit, AMD or Intel — any land mines here?
    The FAQ talks about speed (1 to 2+ GHz); is this outdated?

I love the 64-bit AMD’s. Very fast, twice as many registers, support
the underdog that’s building better processors, etc. I haven’t yet
tested on one of the EM64T’s. The 3 GHz P4’s also fly. The only way
to go wrong is to get one with a crippled cache. Do not get a
Celeron!

  1. USB interface: to minimize the bottleneck, the motherboard or USB
    PCI card must not constrain the bandwidth further.

Pretty much all of the builtin USB controllers I’ve seen lately work
fine.

  1. Linux distribution: I am currently using Ubuntu but is another
    choice going to cause fewer problems?

Ubuntu is perfect. There are lots of satisfied users on the list.

  1. Anything else I missed?

Don’t think so. Regarding speed, I generally buy the fastest thing
available that’s just below the knee in the curve where the pricing
goes nuts.

Thanks,

–
Bob Collins
Sunnyvale CA USA

Eric