Building your own Rampage Boxes?

[Cory Smith]

Just curious how many of you are running Rampage on their hardware or have you built custom boxes?

I've got a DLT that is starting to show it's age and would love to upgrade it, but there is no way I can get the money required to buy one from Rampage, would have to be a custom built box.

If you have built custom, any gotchas you have run into?

[jbbbarr]

Did not build, but replaced a DLT with an HP workstation, 3.0 duo core and 4gigs ram, never looked back. There is really no need for their hardware, unless you just like to burn money. Getting ready to do the other box soon, I will get an exact duplicate of the other, I will do this when I install 10.5.


Rampage 10.4

[almaink]

What about the RAMpage HASP? Every time I ask RAMpage tech support about building, or buying my own as you did, they say the HASP won't work.

[jbbbarr]

I had a tech from a local supplier do this for me, he did not have any problems, it cost 2 hrs labor plus the box, approx 1800.00 direct from HP, it came with XP but I upgraded to 2003 server and put in another 160 gig drive that I use to archive the rampage jobs. This switch was painless, the only thing the tech required was a parallel port which was not a big deal. I am going to have him do the other box in the upcoming month, I do not think Rampage is willing to show any of us how this works, but when the tech comes out I will be there this time and have him show me how to transfer the hasp info, according tho him it takes just a few minutes, and will report back to this forum with the solution. If you have a good relationship with your local tech. he can also help you.

[almaink]

Looking forward to seeing your post, I do all my own tech work here so this will be great. Last time I called Rampage I asked about switching my PDF trap engine over to my shooter box as it's a dual core unlike my present Rip/server that is just a dual xeon. They said it was possible but was very complex. I'm not much of a windows person, always had just Macs here and I know that hardware inside out. That was the one thing about Rampage I didn't like, having to run Windows OS and hardware.

[Whitaker]

I used to install Rampage systems and there wasn't anything special about the PC hardware (disclaimer: that was quite a few years ago). But there are some boards that are in the PCs that are specific to the function of the box, for example you might have a shooter with an interface to your platesetter, but you have the drivers for the boards and most of them are PCI boards so that shouldn't be a problem. I don't remember if a DLT has a Rampage specific board in it, but if it does you should be able to move it to another box and load the driver. They just want you to buy their box so that when you call with a problem they know what hardware you have and can get past a potential hardware issue when trouble-shooting the problem. They don't want to have to trouble-shoot every type of system out there.

I would recommend keeping the DLT PC that you have intact just in case you have to call them with a problem, that way you can just attach the dongle to it and be up and running when talking to them. I don't think they would help if you called them with a problem and they found out your using a non-Rampage blessed PC.

Good luck!

[jbbbarr]

Sorry it took so long to update.

Here is the deal, I had my DLT sort of die, at least tha's my story, got the authorization to buy another box and got an HP xw8600 workstation w/ the downgrade to xp pro installed(like vista is an upgrade), quad core xeon @ 2ghz and 2gb ram , no video card, hp is too proud, and there is no parallel port on this box. When the box arrived I installed a geforce 6200, 2 more gb ram, and a pci parallel port card. Do not use a usb to parallel.

Remember to check all settings on your rampage icons by getting the properties and checking the target on the box you are going to replace. Also your box will need to be named the same and drive mappings will need to be kept the same, ie - mine was drive G.

I then installed 10.5 base, restarted and installed the 10.5.3 update. Then left my prescan icon alone, it worked on the default settings, but on my RIP icon I added -r -rdm -rend, to match the old box, that reads as follows:

C:\rsi\RAMOUT\rampage.exe -r -rdm -rend

This box cost $1565+tax+xtra ram+2 cards for total of 2K. It is smoking fast, good luck, remember your box only needs a parallel port, the techs are pulling your leg, or is it your wallet

[chknlegs]

We attempted this with our own equipment when we first purchased the Rampage JVX workflow. We had some issues with their hardware being compatible with our hardware. For example, when we needed a screening board for 1 bit tiff output, it was not compatible. They needed to use some kind of screening software rather than a screening board. Also, when we attempted to install the option for a Fuji CTP device it did not work with our hardware.

Keep in mind this was a DELL POWEREDGE server setup. I have been told that it is very important to have an Intel board. I know for a fact that you can use your own equipment. Just try to buy the same components that they use in their boxes. I strongly suggest to stay away from Dell computers for any application. My opinion is that they suck badddd.

We are running a custom box with intel board now and it works well. If you are self reliant in fixing problems, go this way. BUT if you require the vendor to help you out when there's problems, I suggest getting their box because it's easy to blame your hardware for problems. I've seen it happen.

Hope this helps. Take care

[jbbbarr]

You are so right about Dell, that's why I have switched to the quad core hp workstations. You are also right on the shooter card if you have one. I run my shooter box on nt4 still, don't know what is compatible but I will cross that bridge later. I was talking about the rip and satellite boxes, as long as you use quality intel workstations from hp you literally save more than 50% for the comparable gear from rampage. It only takes a few minutes to install and get these up and running, not complicated at all. The complication arises when you are using one box for everything, ie- rip, proofer, shooter, I do not suggest this especially in a multi-user environment, just causes bottlenecks.

Good luck Cory.

[ian]

I've worked on rampage for over 10 years now. We've build out own boxes every 2-3years and never had a problem. The most important thing is make sure you use an intel chipset for the motherboard, lots of ram and windows XP and you should have no problems at all. If using an older version of Rampage you might have to settle with windows 2000 pro.

At one point when one of our servers crashed I used a celeron computer and it worked perfectly fine, just very slow but not down!!!

ian