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On Sun, 11 Oct 2015 21:45:51 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

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stuff snipped

I never saw FCC certifications on anything but parts that were clearly
used
for RF transmission or attachment to the POTS lines.


Used to be FCC or DOC on all computer compnents. I've got CD drives
with FCC certs on them
I haven't built a clone in almost 10 years, and it.s been 26 years
since I was in the computer "manufacturing" business.

It's been a while for me too. I switched to all laptops because a) the
power savings were substantial and b) the laptops are all the same
configuration meaning I can take a Ghost backup from a dead laptop and
easily reload it onto another machine. When I was using clones, each was
subtly different from the other making restores to anything but the drive
the backup was made on would fail.

I'll be going through all my old XT/AT parts to trash them this week so I
will be able to review which items have FCC certs. I would suspect that
hard drives, CDs and other items from name manufacturers have FCC IDs but
I
would be surprised if I see their mark on anything else.
I buy desktops 25 at a time for the application where I have a lot
configured the same (production floor), and 7 to 9 at a time for the
other office, where we are aiming to replace all computers on a
rotating 4 year schedule. The last 3 batches have been close enough to
identical that an image from one works on the next.

I didn't realize until I standardized on one particular machine (Fujitsu
tablets) how remarkably convenient it is to be able to take an image from
one machine and load it onto another - without getting the BSOD.

Been using high
end Acers (Veriton M46 series - 4618, 4620, and 4630 over the last 3
or 4 cycles) Also using the same Acers for office machines at the
factory, replacing a mixed bag of clones, Dell and MDG crap. On the
plant floor we are using refurbed Lenovos.

I'm user some ACER stuff now, and so far, so good.

I've had 3 motherboard failures in the last batch of Acers at the
plant - 4 hard drives over the last 3 years or so at the insurance
office. Other than that the Acers have been VERY good.

I just had my first crapped out laptop HD and it failed without giving any
warning. My machines see very light use so it's no wonder they've lasted 15
years. They've been so reliable that I haven't been backing up as regularly
as I used to. That's because a good HD crash every now and then reminds you
that they're just machines and as such, prone to failure at some point.

The first batch of Lenovos, with XP Pro, purchaced at 3 years of age 4
years ago, have been failing at an accellerated rate the last 6 months
or so (Old P4s) so we just got 25 matching Core 2 Duo machines on
Win7Pro. The first batch replaced MAI terminals - mostly P4s but a
handfull of Core 2 machines as well. The Core 2 machines have been
rock solid - the P4 machines are suffering from swollen electrolytic
capacitors - Lenovo got hit with the fake electrolyte "flu" like so
many others - but the problem was cured before the Core 2 machines.
came on line.

I have a lot of gear in the corner of the basement sitting on shelf waiting
for me to open them up and look for bad caps. The TVs followed the
well-known pattern of taking longer and longer to turn on until one day,
they wouldn't. It's such a problem with stuff manufactured during the "flu"
that there are eBay sellers who assemble kits of HQ caps for various TV
models.

Deploying the 25 machines will keep me busy for a few weeks of Tuesday
and Thursday afternoons - - - - -. I've got the software all installed
- set up one machine then cloned the other 24 - so it will just be
setting up machine names, configuring the user, and getting them onto
the network.

The beauty of identical machines. As a clone builder only for myself, I
think I only have two identical machines that can accept each other's image
files. Then I got religion and decided uniformity was a big asset. I seem
to remember someone selling cloning machines that would take a list of user
IDs, machine network names, etc. and use them to alter each clone so that it
was ready to boot.

--
Bobby G.