Thanks to all for their comments.
Yes, Beelink and MELE look interesting – slightly confusing that the detailed Amazon info on the Beelink says DOS as the OS. Heard ASUS picked up the latest NUCs from Intel when they withdrew from the market, but it look like its the top end of the market only.
With a new disc, the old ACEPC runs fine for Word processing and light browsing via Mint but lacked the grunt for TheSkyX plus a CPU intensive VB6 program.
Have looked at the old Dell workstations and its a good solution, but can’t yet work out how to avoid cable tangle – the 100mmx100mm Minipc sits on the polarscope port of the EQ6.
This morning it occurred to me that as the system is run headless (no keyboard/monitor/mouse) it could have done a Windows update without me knowing. Will check the Intel NUC site and see if there are driver or firmware updates I could try re/installing. Nothing to lose. Its under 3 year guarantee. Something to do this afternoon.
STOP PRESS: A combination of 4 new drivers (2 relating to USBs) and 2023 Firmware upgrade got it going again. Just observed T Crb. Yay! But thanks to everyone anyway, its focussed my mind on what to do about Windows – also, I’m faintly ashamed I had not done a Firmware upgrade before.
