Wiring a restaurant for Aloha

[Stangin83]

Hey, we are getting ready to open our restaurant, and with all the expenses of kitchen equipment and such, I am just going to run all the Cat 5e cable for Aloha myself. I have a networking background - I went to college for MIS for about 2 years before changing my degree, and i've interned in several IT departments for various companies.

Anyway this is my setup.

I am running 3 wires to each terminal - One for the terminal, one for the printer, one for a spare. This is what I was told I needed.

I am going to actually split the wires apart, take 2 pair for one plug and 2 pair for another plug.

Now here's another question. When I'm going back to the pizza delivery office, can I run a single Cat 5e back there, plug it into a switch, plug all the terminals into said switch and have that one supply cat 5e connected to the uplink? Or will that just not work / make it extremely slow.

Also, what are the server requirements for the server? I think the company is trying to sell us way more than we need. The current specs for the server are:

dual front removable SATA hard drives on RAID 1
P4 3Ghz 512 mb RAM
2 NIC cards (one on board, one PCI)
DVD+R/CD-RW
$1,825

Isn't this extremely overpriced for what it is?

 

[Stangin83]

Also, I have one question. For a place like my service bar, can I have a computer there with a printer attached print all the service bar tickets? Or do I need a separate printer just for such tickets to print out of?

Thanks,
Russ

 

[TLowder]

First let me say I don't know anything about Alohas requirements but these seem to be general enough questions. Some of your question could also depend on how many coumputers you're installing. 3 wires seems over kill to me, but I guess its easier than running another wire later. I only run 1 for my clients and have never had a problem in restaurants. The only time I ever had problems with cable was in a previous job that involed installing computers in grain elevators where rodents had chewed a wire. It seems they are selling you more expensive network printers, which would requires the additional wire, as opposed to parallel, usb or serial printers. I've never heard of spliting the wires apart as I thought Cat5e uses all 8 wires. I would advise against this. You should be fine running 1 wire and using the switch like you explained. As far as the seperate printer at the bar that is more a matter of preference. It is nice to have a dot matrix printer for serviced drinks so the bartenders can hear it print and use a thermal for all other printing. Aloha is expensive no surprise to hear they are charging $1825 for the desktop with an outdated processor, although I've never used removable SATA drives and I'm not sure how much this effects the cost. Does the $1825 include the license to run their software on this computer?

Tom

 

[DTSMAN]

3 wires per computer is ok. Depends on the ratio of computers to remoter priners in the kitchen and other areas. You need one drop for the network, do not take any pairs out of it. The other two wires are for serial port uplinks to run the remote printers and you will need all pairs. Do not split out pairs, just pull extra wire. How I do it is that I run cat5 to every thing and the dealer uses adapters on the printers so standard cat5 patch cables can be used to up link the printer to the finished wall jack.
All wires run to the main punch down block. I will label the jacks at the wall as follows:
Term 1:
Jack 1 = 10 ethernet
Jack 2 = 12 Term1 com2
Jack 3 = 13 Term1 com3
Term 2:
Jack 1 = 20 ethernet
Jack 2 = 22 Term2 com2
Jack 3 = 23 Term2 com3
etc....
At the punch panel I use short cat5 cables to jumber 12 to K1 so that Term1 com2 drives the remote printer. If term1 fails move the jumper to another available com port and re-identify it in Aloha. The two nics are becoming standard. One is set to obtain for the DSL provider and the other is set to static so Aloha will work. One is OK but if someone hits the reset button on the router, then network is lost and credit cards go down and the dealer loses remote access. Dealers are being forced to sell Radiant hardware and those specs is just how it comes.

Bo

Remember,
If the women don't find you handsome,
they should at least find you handy.
(Red Green)

http://www.redgreen.com

 

[alohaakamai3]

And whether or not it is even was Radiant hardware, they are selling an exclusive product in a specialized industry. Hospitals charge $10 for an aspirin, and no really likes it, but in a business to business environment, its a little more expected that they you are going to pay substantially more than what you're going to pay from Dell.

It probably doesn't include any software other than the OS, but it probably DOES include the time they need to take to install it, configure it, burn it in, etc.

This topic has been done "ad nauseum" on this forum, but it bears repeating in this case-let them provide the nuts and bolts of your system. That way it's their responsibility if it breaks (one I am sure they are happy to assume) and you're not paying twice for the same product if their is a problem later on. Supplying printers to save money is one thing-supplying hardware like computers, especially the fileserver, is asking for trouble.

It sounds to me like your already shouldering up enough the burden here, in an effort to save costs. Understandable. But you don't want any arguments and extra costs that could possibly arise if there is a problem. I've had to charge customer twice as much in just hourly rates to get a computer working that they provided - then what they would have paid me in for a computer and it's installation, had they let us provide it.