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oh yeah man, in the olden days man, when i was trading spoos and bonds
off tick charts man...twas time... now i am on monthly charts mostly...
call it graduation or just getting old... or maybe wise?
it took a while to get from tick charts to monthly... i tell you.
as far as the computer building, you know how it goes when you are young
and on a budget with 5 thousand dollar account trying to make a fortune in futures,
you gotta cut corners and save some doe for the rent and the babes at the joint...
twas time... i bet you many of us went through the tick chart / 5K account / spoo /
clone / satellite / stochastic system / basement trading office
and some graduated to low res once or twice a year trading :-)
if you made it all the way from tick to montly, man... you are there...
bilo.
----- Original Message -----
From: Jerry War
To: 'Bilo Selhi' ; 'Omega List'
Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2002 2:57 PM
Subject: RE: building trading machine from scratch...
Why do I have the impression you have done this before? :-)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bilo Selhi [mailto:biloselhi@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2002 2:55 PM
> To: Omega List
> Subject: building trading machine from scratch...
>
>
> ok per requests, here are a few pointers on building a
> trading machine from scratch.
> - get a case with at least 300W power supply, i recommend at
> least one extra intake fan. make sure the case/motherboard is
> enabled for sleep or hibernate modes, in which case you can save
> energy and your hard drives from spinning all the time...
> also make sure you keyboard allows one touch power, sleep, wake up
> interface with mobo and powersupply, have to check three things for
> that: power supply, mobo and keyboard all three must be enabled
> for various power saving modes.
> - preferably get a well known Intel chipset board, you can of course
> go with AMD board but make sure you get a stable chipset.
> you can find out about all mobo problems on www.motherboards.org
> website. motherboard IS the key component!!!
> - processor speed IS NOT that important for trading, most of you trade
> 1-5 markets intraday and 1Ghz machine is plenty... don't waste 10K on
> a super machine that will go obsolete in one year... unless of course
> you are trading most world markets on 1 min charts with
> autoexecution :)
> - memory, get at least 256M but better 512M is plenty to run
> tradestation,
> when the market load goes up on some news event 512 should be plenty
> to handle those fast market ticks... memory size is more
> important than
> processor speed, a known fact.
> - get two equal size hard drives, use one a back up with
> duocor, THE ONLY
> way to go when trading... with duocor you can be back up and running
> in under 1-3 minutes if you main drive fails. use removable
> trays for both
> master drive and slave drives, so you can swap the drives
> without opening
> the case ( if bios boot hd selection option is not avail )
> make sure the case has enough
> 5' bays to accommodate your 2 hds + CD + whatever. don't use
> crapware back up
> such as ghost, drive image, etc .... it is CRAP... amateur ware...
> - many of you on the list go to extremes when selecting video
> cards... big mistake
> unless you are a gamer you don't need fancy video for
> trading... you need a basic
> dual 2D AGP card or a couple of single cards will do the
> same, unless you a running
> something like 100 charts at on one frigging giant screen...
> - get at least 17' flat screens, else you face will burn from
> heat and radiation,
> monitors - that's where you want to invest your money, not
> the machine...
> - basic on board sound is all you need, not a friggin 3D 5
> channel surround sound
> TS new order beep... if you are a high resolution trader (
> 1min -5 min ) and need to
> use the crapper ( that maybe outside if you are backwoods
> trailer trader ) and want to hear the
> alerts at same time then get a speaker / cordless
> phone combination, place base phone near computer speaker,
> page the condless
> part, you can now hear the speaker alert sound through the
> cordless phone which
> you should take with you to the crapper. alternatively use
> baby monitor...
> ( i have one extra for sale if someone wants it :-) ), else
> you have to pump the volume
> up so that you could hear the alert from the crapper which
> might be detremental to
> the process itself or scare the s...t out of you while you
> are doing it, your wife or you dog,
> comes from personal experience... don't repeat others mistakes...
> yet another alternative is wiring a crapper with a speaker or
> taking it at the desk... joking of course.
> ( by the way using a baby monitor/ cordless phone comes handy
> when finding a sattelite
> on a dish by a beep, you figure the rest )
> - if you want to get a CD burner, make sure there are no
> known issues with
> motherboards and OS... check BEFORE you buy... same goes for DVD.
> if you plan to use DVD drive to watch movies after market
> then pay attention
> to your video card selection,
> basic might not do there, but still you only need 2D card but
> with extra memory,
> make sure it's compatible with the DVD drive. no need to get
> super 3D ultrafast
> $300 video cards for chart trading...total waste of resources.
> - don't try to come up with a machine for trading and playing
> games at same time...
> gamer machines must have different configurations, more power, etc...
> - use w2k OS, this is the professionals OS, Xp is not
> needed... but is ok.
> what is important is you
> make sure you understand windows restore and basic
> troubleshooting concepts such as:
> recovery consol and its commands, erd back up disk, how to
> handle lock ups and freezes,
> hd repair and maintenance and what to do if you get a virus (
> if you run an antivirus pack
> and duocor with ERD then you should never get hit ), w2k
> boot options,
> get a manual for w2k, install recover consol boot option,
> always use ERD disk, get duocor
> and on-track virus and system pack and use it wisely...
> - last and not least, every time TS upgrade comes out do a
> full back up, then install then
> check for a couple of days then back up again... the same
> with other software or hardware
> additions/changes.
> - after you build you machine, burn it for at least 24 hours in dos.
> - don't install ANY third party crapware/shareware/freeware
> from download.com...
> only the ones that widely used...such as winzip, hypersnap,
> acrobat, a lot of the
> ware from there is spyware or trojanware, especially gnutela
> type ware... stay away
> unless you want somebody to have access to your machine while
> you are away...
> or use dedicated machine for the non critical tasks...
> - get at least a 500W UPS back up, but make sure you
> understand that most
> backup will not protect from power spikes ( there 3 types of
> power problems:
> spikes due to lightning - EMP, burnouts - short duration
> power loss and blackouts )
> that will reset you machine even if it's on UPS when EMP
> spike comes ( Florida and
> other lighting prone states ), but will usually take care of
> burnouts and short blackouts,
> else gotta ground both the machine and ups...
> - if you are privacy or big brother freak( we all should be
> now since 911 ) then must get something
> like secure tunneling pack for e-mail and browsing... check
> with www.freedom.net or anonymiser
> although no mention of secure tunneling on freedom anymore.
> also get a Nat hardware firewall.
> anybody knows if pop. secure tunneling packages have back
> doors to kar-ni-vo-r please let me know?
>
>
> i e-mailed the dos burn utility to traders2traders, get it there.
> bilo.
> ps. how to build a test machine:
> - if you are a beginner developer than you can need a test
> machine to test you software
> and OS. well there is a very simple way of building a test
> machine from you main machine.
> get a extra hard drive, put it in a removable tray, install
> whatever OS you want to test on it
> and simply replace you test hard drive with working hard
> drive - you just got yourself a
> test machine without buying it... you can then screw with the
> test hard drive all you want,
> drop it, burn it, infest it with whatever bugs,spyware and
> viruses you want, reformat it, etc... test what
> you want on it, without buying a separate machine just for
> that... plus the rest of the hardware
> stays the same so you can test basically on the same hardware
> configuration...very convenient.
>
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