Just picked up a CF-27 PIII 500MHZ...what can I look forward to?

Yup, picked it up off ebay, I have a spare 300mhz that has an f-ed up MB and won't go past the post screen, so I'll use the HD out of that one as well as the floppy or cd-drive I have. Anyone have any experience with them? I'm thinking windows XP or windows 2000...defiantly not windows ME.

 

The first thing I do when I set up a CF-27 for work is do a fresh install of 2000 and down load all the upgrades from MS. Do not install the IE upgrades, they suck!! Very stable and fast enough!

 

Too bad I don't have any copies of 2000....only 98. Anything else you guys can think of?

 

Short of getting an OS to work, I'm not sure what else to do to a 27. I've never owned one. I couldn't get into the smaller screen... I need all my 13" on mine for fuel injection tuning.

 

Wow, just looked on eBay, they still want a lot for W2000 Pro. Look on Craig's List locally. I picked up 3 unopened copies from a guy for $20 each. It's a good OS for the older Toughbooks and you won't get any issues as they were built for that era OS. No activation hassles either.

 

Being completely honest, once Megatunix 0.9.16 is released, I won't have a use for Windows other than GPS mapping. (GPSDrive just doesn't cut the cake for what I want unfortunately).

 

Xp works fine on the P3-500. It even works halfway-decent on the P2-300. the problem with the 500 is the high rate of failure of the sound system.. If you have one with sound, consider yourself lucky

 

My CF-27's have a 12" screen, not too big of a diffrence if you ask me. Thats what I plan on using my P2-300 for, fuel injection tuning on my car.

Yeh, hopefully the sound card isn't blown...I wonder what fails on the sound card?

 

You gonna use a Megasquirt? If so, I encourage all support for the MegaTunix software developer, because he has one sexy looking interface on that thing. Unfortunately until the end of the month, MS-II support is not going to be there yet.

Oh, and if you are using Megasquirt, you building it yourself, or buying one assembled?

 

I'm actually thinking about it on my CA18DET for my Sentra wagon AWD, but on my other car it simply uses a com port interface and acts as an emulator. Would you recomend buying a fully built unit or making it myself? My grandfather is an electrical engeineer, and I have a butload of tools at my disposal...how much cheaper is it?

 

I think it's roughly $100 cheaper to buy the DIY kit. If you've ever soldered before, it's a picnic, and kinda fun. If you've never soldered before, or have a radio shack soldering iron... you might hate it.

 

Not that I would be the kind of guy who has a 15watt Radio Shack soldering iron, but IF I was, what should I have instead?

 

I'd recommend a Weller primarily, but I have a Xytronic soldering station with adjustable heat.

Adjustable heat is very nice.

 

Thanks! I'll start shopping for a better iron.

 

This is what I use personally; http://www.howardelectronics.com/xytronic/379.html (Bought it from them too, they give a discount if you add the code "megasquirt" when you fill out the order).

They don't have the nice Weller pencil that I bought my brother on there though, I got that at the local electronics store. It was about $15 or so.

Both of the above have suited me very well for soldering though.

The reason I hate radio shack though... Their irons pulse the heat so slowly. It ends up making the tip way hotter than it should be for a second or two, then getting too cold to work solder for another few seconds.

 

I own several soldering irons for various tasks; I have the AYOUE 2702 listed here:

http://www.amazon.com/Aoyue-Profesional-Repair-Rework-Station/dp/B000HDJ5J2

and the Hakko unit listed here:

http://www.amazon.com/Hakko-936ESD-...ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1208265475&sr=1-1

And I've had a number of others, all of which have been used up & tossed.

However - the ones I've ALWAYS had are these:

http://www.all-spec.com/1/viewitem/GT7A/ALLSPEC/prodinfo/w3path=vend

and my venerable old Weller WTCPN (Now superseded by the WTCPT, but I prefer the older one-piece design)

http://www.all-spec.com/1/viewitem/WTCPT/ALLSPEC/prodinfo/w3path=cat

Now the WTCPN/WTCPT do NOT have a KNOB for adjusting temperature; rather, they have designed the temperature adjustment into the easily replaceable tips. This prevents you from cranking up the heat on a tip that isn't meant to handle the heat. You can buy tips in the 600,700, or 800 (for lead-free solder) degree range; but the important thing is, the tips are designed to operate at the temp they're set at, so your tip life is GREATLY increased. My Hakko (GREAT iron and cheap to maintain) simply EATS the smaller .6, .8 & 1mm tips... (good thing the tips are cheap) however, I have similar tips for my WTCPN that are over 10 years old (I've had the iron itself and my GT-7 temperature controlled gun for over 20 years).

The one thing that is most important to remember is to get an iron that has CLOSED-LOOP temperature control. Many of the cheaper ones just have a rheostat type control which adjusts voltage applied to the heating element, invariably resulting in cold solder joints or burned up PC boards.

I will ALWAYS recommend Weller products; they are tools intended to last a lifetime, as my experience shows. But for a casual user, the less expensive brands should suffice; the XYTRONIC model Modly suggests has good specs and it looks like a clone of the now discontinued Weller WESTPN (If I remember correctly) model which I used to have, only they've removed the built-in iron holder & substituted a separate base/tip cleaner. I also like that they have kept the little tin cup for catching the cast-off solder - one of the main reasons I still prefer my WTCPN over the other less-civilised models, even those from Weller (I really HATE having to clean excess solder from my sponge and the well underneath).

mnem<~~~ Tool Tips from the Tool-Dwagon*