New Raspberry Pi 5 announced

[wove]

Sounds like a fund project. It is too bad we are separated by an ocean and a half a continent. I have a couple switches and piles of cable laying around. It is a bit older probably 10/100 stuff. I put in a fair amount of cabling in at one point, which is hard to do in an old house. Overtime though we have switched to pretty much all wireless networking, with a couple runs of cable used to extend the network.

The Nextcloud server is on a wired connection as is the media center and a couple plugs left for those times, when some old wireless card is not cooperating and needs drivers installed. And there are a few pieces of memorabilia with wireless A/B cards, which no longer work on newer networks. Switches, wireless access points and modem boxes all use more power than it seems they should. The main distribution box where the network enters the house uses ~40watts and since it is on 24/7 it is one of biggest consumers of electricity in the house. (My ISP requires that I use their equipment at the entry point, so beyond just harping at them there is nothing I can do about it.)

It is interesting to set it all up. You get a bit of handyman stuff, a bit of tech stuff and of course the fun of cleaning up your mess. Nice thing though is once up and running, it is useful for years and it tends to be very low maintenance. Have fun and good luck.

[dai_trying]

Thanks, I do have some cable and connectors but might have to get another reel (I can't remember how much I have used already so it's a bit of guess work. I do have a few cables in already, house machines and the garage/workshop is already hardwired (I doubt I could have finished the garage/workshop without my fix of internet while I work) so I should only need some patch leads.
I find the wireless is still a bit patchy and I have two routers piggy backed to create my own network on a separate subnet so anyone connecting to the home router can't even see my machines
I haven't checked the laptops ethernet ports yet so not sure what speed I get, but 100Mbps would be fine for local work anyway so I don't think that will be an issue.

[crosscourt]

Were they all the same laptop or different ones? Curious as to what models youll be using.

[dai_trying]

Two different models 6 of 1 and four of the other, pretty old (windows 7) but I tested ethernet and it's gigabit!! and wifi is 5ghz so although old they are not too bad. i3 370m processor in 6 pcs, although I haven't checked the other ones yet but i imagine they will be similar.
They were originally school laptops and have wear and tear accordingly but they all work and have good screens so not too bad really.

[wove]

Our school district use to have auctions in the summer where you could pickup their "surplus" equipment. It was an excellent source of decent used equipment. The best stuff was usually the peripherals. Printers and scanners were generally what I looked for. After the college kids moved out in the spring, you could go up to the college and dumpster dive and find a lot of nice machines that the kids had tossed out. There were lots of good books as well. (I guess their folks would just buy them new stuff for the next school year.) Those streams have dried up, which is just as well since I have more stuff than I care to think about.

[dai_trying]

since I have more stuff than I care to think about.

That's about the position I'm finding myself in

[crosscourt]

1st gen Arrandale cpus with 2 cores and 4 threads. Are they Dell,HP? Use to love buying systems from schools and I also spent some time servicing them for schools years ago.
My tendency is I trade or sell stuff off then end up buying up more stuff.

[dai_trying]

They're not a "regular" brand as such, RM Education is displayed on them all. I will probably just put them on eBay when I'm done and see if anyone else is as daft as me

[crosscourt]

RM Education sells a variety of brands including HP,Dell and Lenovo laptops to schools. I dont have much luck selling older stuff on Ebay as I cant make my money back. I try to sell or trade locally and donate to non-profits as well.