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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Protel 99SE on Mini PC
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Dinosaur Guru  Joined: 12/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 311 |
Hi All Just to share the results of my new Mini PC and the setup. The Mini is This one I haven't optimised the Bios to get the higher performance as I don't do gaming. The result is that at ambient of 23C the fan rarely starts and is just a whisper. The unit is cool to touch. Basically very happy with the speed and performance. Different story with Win 11 though. Had to prove I was human about six times before it accepted. The first time I installed Protel 99 SE there was an option that basically meant it should look for Server License as needed, or automatically. Picked the wrong one (as needed) and it kept failing on the loading of the projects with an violation error in AdvSch.dll. Deleted it all and tried again and set it to Automatic, but also used custom setup and un-ticked all the options that I don't use. I only use Schematic. Worked perfectly after that. After that deleted again and installed to document the steps. However the Server License didn't come up again, so my terminology above may be wrong. I actually also re-installed my Acad2000 Land Desktop again and it is also working perfectly. Didn't want to be under the pump and at the same time learning Qcad fully. Reducing the Win partition and creating a larger partition for Debian was easy. Same with installing Dedian. However the Grub boot menu did not appear and it kept booting to Win11. Had to do the following in Win terminal: bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\debian\grubx64.efi Hope this is of some use for others. Regards Regards Hervey Bay Qld. |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3800 |
+1 on bcdedit On occasion I've also had to use powercfg.exe /hibernate off (or powercfg /h off) John |
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Rickard5 Guru Joined: 31/03/2022 Location: United StatesPosts: 463 |
Hey man I LOVE my Mini Pc's I've got 4 of them strewn through out the house and as soon as I can get s customer upgrade I'll have 4 more ;) I love them because they only raise my Power bill like $2-$3 a month I'm running Ubuntu on 2 of them and win 11 with Win 10 - 11 HACK! one of my Ubuntu boxes is running the NAS in my Living room, 1 of the win 11 boxes is running my vinyl cutter, the other 2 boxes are on my desk, and all of them are headless and running Microsoft Remote Desktop I really like having the 2 on my desktop as sand boxes so I Don't screw up my real Workstations with trying something new or micro$oft patches. Oh and I'm with you about the Proving I'm Human, I have moral Objections to lying to the computer that I am Human when Clearly I'm not  I may be Vulgar, but , while I'm poor, I'm Industrious, Honest, and trustworthy! I Know my Place |
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stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2125 |
I don't know why "Thanks Stanleyella"? my sound problem was Realtek driver not working, so used a usb to audio adaptor and ms audio. I'd like to try a mini pc but they tend to be £200 or more. dunno what you'd get for £120. I installed win 11 from iso on an Optiplex "mini pc" and it's cool and can't hear the fan. Not as mini but £33.50. |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 6783 |
There's a lot of second hand Beelink mini PCs on ebay. Some for less than £100, especially if you aren't bothered about Win 11. 90 quid - Win10 72 quid - Win11 They aren't speed demons, but very good toys. :) Edited 2024-06-23 00:46 by Mixtel90 Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2125 |
interesting but are they a novelty or reality don't need a big "desktop" pc, mine are all on the floor. do you need a dvd drive? I got a usb one but don't use that either. a little box the size of an android tv box but win 10 hdmi to large tv seems good. I tried the mini optiplex as media player but only vga out but 1080, audio through tv amp. celeron!! argh! slow, I had one win 7. maybe why the tidy mini pcs are £250+ Edited 2024-06-23 02:56 by stanleyella |
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| Rickard5 Guru Joined: 31/03/2022 Location: United StatesPosts: 463 |
Sorry Stanley I don't Know why That line in a Post long ago Made me laugh so hard but I will change it, I never meant it as an insult, I just thought it was an absurd line like we rewrote the entire sound drivers, then found out no one turned up the volume on the speakers :) I may be Vulgar, but , while I'm poor, I'm Industrious, Honest, and trustworthy! I Know my Place |
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| stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2125 |
no prob just wondered as you had probs with win 11 install. I never had the robot issue just avoided ms stuff best I could. no win 10 support after oct 2025 |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 6783 |
They aren't just a novelty, Stan, they are "proper" PCs. They tend to be low power and hence relatively low speed (so no arcade gaming). Some don't even have a fan, in fact my 21" monitor draws more power than this PC. You can get higher power ones now, but you obviously pay more. A lot of the low power ones were intended for things like point of sale terminals. Celeron-type CPUs are fine for web browsing etc. You don't need anything faster. I have a USB DVD drive that gets plugged in maybe once a year when I *need* it. I do, however, have a RAID1 NAS as main storage (although a decent size USB3 drive is almost as good if it's only going to be used in one place. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| Dinosaur Guru Joined: 12/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 311 |
Hi All I was so used to my desktop usb transfers being slow, that I considered it the norm. With the Ryzen 7 I had to literally check and confirm that it did in fact copy everything. Watching video's online was great without any stuttering. Last night I backed up from the Mini to a sata SSD with usb adapter. It took just over an hour to transfer 210 Gb. That would have taken me all night on the desktop. That was using the "cp source target" statement in cli on Debian. The Mini will live next to the desktop for a while and then the desktop is going into the workshop. Hope the mini survives my luggage. Regards Hervey Bay Qld. |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 6783 |
It's very much "horses for courses". :) I don't expect 4k video streaming or being able to run Minecraft with all the best rendering stuff switched on, but that doesn't bother me in the slightest. I can stream audio from Spotify while I'm using SL6 or NanoCAD (or with both open as well as TinyCAD and a browser sometimes!). That's with 4GB RAM and a Celeron. All silent too. I can't really ask any more of it. I have a win11 tiny PC too, but it's rarely used. I also have a big tower PC that's not been switched on for over a year. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| Rickard5 Guru Joined: 31/03/2022 Location: United StatesPosts: 463 |
(I Have both my Beelinks running Win 11 with the free upgrade, Using This Method Easy Peasy ;) I may be Vulgar, but , while I'm poor, I'm Industrious, Honest, and trustworthy! I Know my Place |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 6783 |
Why this fixation with wanting to run an insecure and possibly unstable OS? It's the most important piece of software on the machine. The one application that you can't afford to take risks with. Microsoft set the hardware requirements for Windows 11. They don't sell PCs and it's not directly in their interests to lock out a huge number of people running Windows 10 on older machines. They've done it for a reason and you may only find out that you should have done what they said when you start to get unexplainable errors corrupting your system at some future date. They will be relying on the hardware meeting the spec and won't attempt to keep Windows 11 compatible with Windows 10 on old hardware. If things break that's your problem, not theirs. It might work *now* but not after an update or two and it won't be their fault. If you have compatible hardware you can get a free update to Windows 11 for home users and it'll be stable (well, as stable as Windows gets anyway!). It will be supported. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| Dinosaur Guru Joined: 12/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 311 |
Hi All Right on the button. I would have been a lot more tolerant towards Windows eons ago if when I bought a copy, it would allow me to install it on any of my machines.(like Linux) When I tried Win embedded(can't recall the marketing name now) I had to buy a license for each of the industrial machines I manufactured. I have hundreds all over the place.The nightmare of upgrading one customer with the correct license and the documentation behind it was enough to only use it on 2 or 3 machines before shifting to alternatives. It was never about the money, it was someone having you by the short and curly's. Today it is just to much effort to convert that "one" application to Linux, so I would even carry a small cigarette case size industrial PC with Windows 7 on it. But now with the Mini I will just carry the mSata drive with me (just in case). I contribute $ to many Linux apps I use, as we can't afford to let this movement die. Regards Hervey Bay Qld. |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 857 |
By far, the biggest reason for industrial machine downtime is a dead HMI. For me, it's a good thing because it's how I make a living  I also have hundreds of machines in the field with a PC-based control and for the most part, they are reliable but when they fail, it's usually a pain to recover from. So today, it's microcontrollers for the real-time stuff and an industrial Android tablet for the front-end with a Bluetooth link. No config necessary, simply download an app and we're off to the races. We have all kinds of display options for our Mites but why bother? What if a screen breaks or touchscreen fails? Most of us carry the most powerful user-interface ever created on our person.  Purchase price can be painful enough but that's nothing when there won't be any in stock for several weeks and the production line is dead-in-the-water:  |
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