New Web-Cafe in Swords

Celt

for the PC's, you need nothing more than geforce 2 mx and an athlon 1ghz and 126 mb pc133, any game will run decently on this and its more than good enough for surfing, as for pricing, try make a gamer's card or somesuch, were they buy the card off you and they get cheap time for playing games only.

Gerry

No, with current memory prices, which are just starting to go back up, its crazy to go for less than 256 megs.

Kali

****** IE just crashed after a good 15 or so points..
ill try to remember the majority

-zip drives
-a very fast cd-rw machine
-top of the range duron w/ geforce mx best price/performance but WLs suggestion will last a good 8 months longer.
-no crisps or any food that clogs keyboards/mice, boooo.
-bottles instead of cans, less spillage.
-ample hard diskspace for a multitude of games (15-20 is perfect as any more and you'll start to lose control over whats stored on them)
-**** can't remember this point
-decent chairs that won't give you buttache after 4 hours solid gaming/surfing.
-biggest monitors affordable.
-flattest monitors affordable.
-good distance between edge of desk and keyboards.
-non OEM-Intellimooses.
-no gayass motherboards stuck to the wall

think thats all.. mostly just commonsense anyway.

Renton

Great!

Em you'll defo be needing a 100 meg network, (i.e. 100 meg switch + 10/100 NIC's in all the comps)

Decent Organised Cabling!
i.e. Have patch panels in a "server room" all labled etc.

depending on how many computers you have, you'll be wanting at least 256k leased line, if you have the cash, 512k.

256k = 30k/sec downloads
512k = 60k/sec downloads etc.

Esat can provide you with these ^^

Nice mice!, very important, I'd recommend intellimice, but again its preference.

Another Idea would be to have removable hard drive caddies in all the machines (they cost about 30 quid a pop) but basically what this means is If one of the machines gets screwed up, you can have a hard drive ready to put in and ghost across an image of a working HD.

Get yourself a decent coffee machine, cos me likes coffee,

Get a GOOD router (i.e. Cisco) and have it configured by the Esat techie, But explain to him what you want done, i'd recommend the same set up as in Hyperlynx in dundrum,
they basically will give you a range of ip's, I would recommend using one for all the machines, stopping any misguided hackers trying to mess up your system,

Make sure you get switches and not hubs (they are more expensive but MUCH better).

I cant really think of much else off hand,

hope I helped

RentZ

Bluehair

Hi,

I'm helping a friend out with development of a new internet cafe in Swords, Dublin.

Any (constructive) thoughts or suggestions would be welcome re; hardware spec/ price structure/ decor/ food/ hours etc..

Considerable work has been done already but i felt it might be a good idea to throw it out to potential customers and see what you might like.........

m1ke

get a fookin 2MBIT line in willya, i need somewhere in Dublin to play Quake3 online from

[This message has been edited by m1ke (edited 29-03-2001).]

adnans

thats the best news so far, im just in the process of moving to swords area, i will be your best customer.

make sure you get all the games and updates and start a tab for meh.

nice
adnans

Trojan

Donabate is a much better location than Swords (on the mainline) but fair nuff, sounds good!

hurry up!

Alo.

adnans

anyone know is this up and running or what?

adnans

azezil

in relation to opening hours...i work in one, originally we were open from 8am - 10pm, but we changed it too 10am - 8pm, cause we just weren't making money b4 / after these times..

---

"just because ur not paraniod, doesn't mean they're not after u!"

Lenny

well I'd say 10am-10pm would be better

Celt

ffs dbc....

sutty

all you need is one IP address for the router, the rest go on a IP address range of 192.168.0.xxx
.1.xxx

which ever you want. I make sure the router has two cards one for the network (192.168.0 or .1) and one for the Internet. you setup IP address translation. and your set their.

3 more things that you want are.....locks for the HD bay said above(these are a good Idea and can save money and time), A central storage server(for ghost images and other drivers/games/mp3's), A well laid out patch panel is always good, Color code the comps with the cat5 cables and take note of the PC/patch point. Keep a copy of it on the door of the rack(for when you need to pull a comps net connect) (I could do this for you, If you want to have it done cheap).

as for lighting and wall color, keep it soft, to bright and you will get a glare on the monitors, to dark and the users will not be able to see what their typing.

food, keep a lot of high energy drinks, redbull, jolt cola, coke....and so on. For food you should get a vending machine, but also get the numbers of all the takeaway shops near by.


what are you going to call the place?


PC's Go with the duron, its good and cheap. 128 megs min and a Ge-Force 2 mx min. Monitors are going to be the worst to get, you will need 19" to have something to bost about go for 21", I'd go with 19", all that's needed really.

---

Ciaran Sutcliffe
aka: sutty
[HIV]sutty
For a good time goto:
http://www.hotinternetvirgins.com

sutty

oh and make sure you have license's for all soft ware that needs them.

---

Ciaran Sutcliffe
aka: sutty
[HIV]sutty
For a good time goto:
http://www.hotinternetvirgins.com

Koopa

my advice would be to buy a really good monitor(preferably flatscreen, but NOT LCD, LCD sucks right now), good keyboards(default layout, dont get those weird ones with palm rests and suchlike), really good mice, decent headphones(if you get a long lead for these you dont need speakers), decent soundcard, decent network cards (100mbit PCI), and then buy whatevers being sold as currently "low end" cpu/motherboard, and mid-range graphics card, but upgrade the cpu/motherboard/gfx card/ram every 9 months to whatevers being sold as "low end" then,

eg. system would be:
21" trinitron monitor,
standard dell keyboard or something like that,
intellimouse (the standard one, not optical, optical ones currently suck)
allsop mousemat (these rock, £7)
decent headphones (whichever)
soundblaster 128 pci,
pci network card (100mbit)
900mhz AMD Duron CPU, +whatever ram/motherboard it takes (youre not overclocking so youre not really pushed to get any particular type, so long as it works)
128megs ram minimum, but dont waste too much cash on ram, extra ram will not make your pc "go faster".
a "budget" graphics card would be a standard geforce2 MX right now, although if you can get your hands on geforce 1 DDR's, they perform better and should be cheaper than geforce 2 mx's.. youre not likely to be able to get geforce 1 sdr's (original geforce) anymore, but if you can, their performance is nearly the same as geforce 2 mx..

whatever you do, make sure the desks are medium height, and have at least 2 keyboard widths between the monitor screen and the end of the desk, do NOT get fancy curvy rounded edged desks, do NOT get swivel chairs, do not get those gay "high" desks that seem to be so popular in netcafes around the country, if the desk is a comfortable height to do your maths homework on, its the right height kids


[edit - i just saw ram prices on www.scan.co.uk, £27 sterling for 128 megs of pc133, thats really cheap, get 256 megs]

[This message has been edited by Koopa (edited 22-05-2001).]

Celt

pld dbc, you got them to take ages to write out a long post to a dead topic that you felt like spamming on.
once again,
pld

Cond0r

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by WhiteLancer:
ffs dbc....</font>

didn't you mean DNC?

Celt

no conor, dbc has been resurrecting (spamming) old posts for a while now...

Celt

HALLOE DEADBANKCLERK!!!1

sutty

hmmmmm.....didn't see the date

ffs

---

Ciaran Sutcliffe
aka: sutty
[HIV]sutty
For a good time goto:
http://www.hotinternetvirgins.com

DeadBankClerk

you need gaming nights on saturday nights. easy money.