minimum laptop hardware needed to program stamp

markallen

Can anyone advise me on the minimum hardware specs for a laptop to program the stamp using version 2.1?

And while we're on the topic, where is the best place to buy used, low end laptops?

Donivan

Looking at the Parallax 2.1 beta editor page, anything Windows98 or up looks like it should work OK, but please check the page first:

http://www.parallax.com/html_pages/downloads/software/software_basic_stamp.asp

With a small program loaded the editor is taking up around 8 Meg of system RAM. All you should need is a serial port (BS1 can now be programmed via serial with an adapter: http://www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=27111 )

For computer soruces, check your local newspaper, or the newspaper of the nearest large city. People try to unload these all the time. eBay is also a good avenue for a used laptop.

Philip

Just be careful as some laptop serial ports are not quite standard and so can cause problems with the stamp. My Dell exhibits this problem and needs to be disconnected from the stamp to get the code to execute. It may not sound like much but when developing software it is a pain to have to unplug the serial connection every time I want to run some code on the stamp.

With this in mind you may want to consider connecting your stamp via the USB port rather than the serial port and this is also an option to fall back on if you go with serial and find that it doesn't work.