Thomas

There are some reasons to use Dell. Numbers: If you're sending out 10+ machines a day, it becomes more cost effiecent to buy barebones from Dell. Branding: Dell spent alot of money building rep in the IT world, why not leverage that? Consistancy: On the server class machines, you know what you're going to get. No frills, very simple robust hardware. Now, we use dell for our pre-built machines. But there are some things to keep in mind if you're going to do that. 1. Don't buy Dimentions. They have everything and the kitchen sink on them. They are the reason for Dell's bad rap. That and the end users buying them. 2. Don't buy Optiplexs. They aren't ment for being more then work stations. 3. Do buy the Power Edge systems. They are server class hardware. 4. Don't buy the OS from Dell. Don't buy any add-ons. You will spend an arm and a leg. Newegg.com is your friend.

Any analogue to digital conversion has some degree of loss. In this case you're looking at a few things. One is a weak camera signal. Second may be the card. I don't know that card so I can't help you troubleshoot it.

It depends on how dead the drive is. If you have to run the platters under an electron microscope in a clean room....you're looking at some money. If the drive is doing a clicky death, then the freezer is your friend. I used to make very good money bringing dead drives back for a few hours. You'd be amazed at what people will pay to get their quickbooks info back. To quote Linus: Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it.

It's a trade off, outsourcing the software. Keeping it in house for us has more advantages then moving it out. Pros: If I need something urgently, I can get it within reason. For instance PTZ protocols. If I can get the protocol then I can get a version that supports it within a few days. Sometimes I need a little one off type of program. I can get it. If I have a why question, they can answer it. If I need to know how part of the program works, I can ask them. When they experament I get to see the fruits of it. If I find a bug, I can show them. All of these are worth the money to us.

You won't get much, less then a file worth of space. Fragmentation is more a speed issue then space in modern file systems. It was a bigger problem when there were alot of bottlenecks in I/O speed, and when file systems were less effecent in how they used sectors on a drive. With FAT16 you needed to keep a tight eye on the file system. FAT32 is better, and less loss of space when it is fragmented.

File fragmentation is a factor of the file system. FAT16= Defrag often FAT32= Defrag somewhat often NTFS= Defrag not very often EXT2= Never EXT3= Never Riesier = Never

Generally it's a Dip switch or jumper in the PTZ camera itself.

Depends on the size of the explosion.

We support it with a DIO card.

It depends by what you mean. I don't know of any Fab plants in the US making capture cards for CCTV use. Tivo has one but they don't do CCTV. Now there are a few software companies in the US. We're one of them, I would guess some of the bigger players have some in the US as well.

The little app is looking for an rs-485/422 connection.

My apolgies but the app I have is for getting to the OSD for PTZ cameras rather then fixed.

The simple program would work. Generally to bring up the internal set up it's a matter of hitting the right preset, then working the menu. Post your e-mail and I'll mail it to you.

Um, get a little 6" LCD and use that....

Those shops are getting harder and harder to find. I'm just old enough to remeber when you could get anything at Radio Shack, now...they are the one stop shop for RC cars and batteries.

If I could recomend going with thier power edge line rather then a dimenion?

Fry's is great...just don't ask thier sales staff anything.

Modem to Phone line Modem to Router Get static IP or No-ip.com service Set up port forwarding on ports (in router)

TCP/IP is independant of the physical layer. For instance the http://eagle.auc.ca/~dreid/index.html TCP/IP over bongos or http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html TCP/IP over Avians My point basicly is I played with it and did it with balans and gender changers.

Dean, meet spam, spam meet Dean.

And the only trade secerts in the dealer forum is prices. And I'll be honest, you won't get those prices from a company.

I'm not trying to make this a flame, I'm just having a rough morning so if this comes out like a flame, I truely don't mean that. I'll try to keep my points short. 1. That kind of marketing is better suited to manufacturers. It's capital intensive. 2. DIY's like to shop around. If Joe Dealer sells a Pelco bundle for $X and Bob Dealer sells it for $X - 5 then which will you buy it from? Joe and Bob go up against Pelco who's gonna win? And my final point: You are the exception to the rule with DIY's. I've worked with enough of them to know that they should spend the money on a dealer.

It can be done, the tough part is connecting it to a kind of router. You might be able to use a balan to Cat5 at the router end, but you can do it. It's not fun, and it's going to be painful but doable.

Why not just use Cat5?

Convert the signal to RS-232 and put it into a PC serial port. Then do a port capture. That would allow confirmation and let you see the protocol it's using.