My old man's computer gave out recently, dodgy processor, which fucked his motherboard, and did the same to the new mobo he bought to replace it. That isn't the good bit, what is, is that he couldn't use the RAM chips with the second new replacement board, so he gave it all to me for nothing.
I have a spare computer somewhere, at the moment I think in this machine, I have 2 gig of RAM. The old computer is a really, really slow old thing with just 512mb, currently not in use, the new ram chips I got given are 4 gig in total. So I can swap in the new 4 gig chips to this, the one that gets used for gaming and anything else intensive, and put what is in here into my spare machine.
I need to add a computer to the lab, doesn't need to be anything powerful, but just good enough not to crawl along really, and to run the software for a UV-vis spectrophotometer I've been looking into building (with the intent of experimenting and perhaps building an IR spec also, for analytical work once I have the basic visible range spec knocked together, assuming its successful)
Analytical kit like that goes secondhand etc. on ebay for quite a lot, some solely visible range ones can be had for about 200 or so, but there is a secondhand UV-Vis spectrophotometer, 200-850 nM range, going for a bit over 4.5 grand, US, or a UV-Vis spec with a 10nM resolution, 400-800nM range, thats going for nearly 13 K, US.
With some stuff I have been reading up on DIY-ed diffraction gratings, looks like its doable for less, much, much less than £50, UK
Sounds like it would make for an interesting project, and certainly bloody useful. Hell's bells, I've even read of an portable attachment suitable for field work that is compact enough to be clipped onto a mobile phone!
So of course, I'd need something to run the software with it, and I've been thinking of saving up for a bit and also investing in a USB camera for my lab microscope (a pretty good one, bought it from india for a bit short of $200 if I remember correctly, managed to get it imported marked as a 'gift' and save a whole bunch of import thef...err.'duty'. The oil immersion lens combined with the replacement eyepieces can get it up to 2000x magnification)
Would be nice to be able to take digital pics and upload them directly to a workstation in the lab, or (not sure if its capable of this), being able to get a live feed from the microscope to my computer screen. I'd still have to do all the focusing, tweaking, aligning slides and the like by hand of course, but it would be good to be able to view the output directly on the computer, sort of like a webcam feed.
Anybody know what a decent flat screen monitor goes for these days, on the cheap end of the scale? really doesn't have to be anything special, as I wouldn't be using it for anything graphics intensive, like gaming. Just need basics such as a sound card, already have a spare laser mouse, I'd have to get a spare keyboard, and a monitor, AFAIK thats just about it, aside from one of those USB hubs to give me some spare ports so as to enable running multiple analytical kit at once.
I do have a monitor spare somewhere, but its a big, bulky CRT, and I need something lighter and much more compact. I used to have the garage as lab space, but now we don't have a garage at all, thanks to my mother. She has MS, can't get up stairs, so my old man had to convert that into a downstairs bedroom:(
Which meant me having to convert the spare UPSTAIRS bedroom into a workspace. Way too little space in there, but its better than nothing. I'll need a lot of space already to build a fume hood, for the moment I still have to work outside if I'm working with anything really noxious, such as say, phosgene, large amounts of Cl2, H2S, etc.
Looking into the project, the site I'm reading from claims it's doable from $10 US. I already have some of the parts, so its looking very tempting to give this a go.
