The assembly of the HTPC was a piece of cake. The Micro-ATX motherboard fits perfectly inside the case. You have to pop out the backplate that was included with the case and use the backplate supplied by the mobo manufacturer.
Everything was marked clearly and the manual was very clear. The one suggestion I have is that if you plan on using a non-SATA dvd drive it is better to attach it before you put the mobo into place, since plugging that in could be a pain.
The one thing about this case is that the case fans are manually set (low or high) and aren’t controlled by the motherboard. Also, the CPU fan is set to run at a very high speed, and you have to enable the variable control for that in the BIOS.
I was very worried that the computer would sound like a jet engine. However, the case fans and the cpu fan are fairly quiet. The WD Green hard drives are also silent, and the computer is barely audible even if there is absolute silence in the room. With a movie or the TV on, you can’t hear it at all.
After I have some of the software set up, I plan on going back in and zip-tying all the wiring in place.
I have spent the last few years talking about platform migrations. The holy grail of platform migrations is to market tools that do everything – 100% full migration of code automagically. However, there really is no holy grail, it’s just something you chase…right?
Well, today I found a deck that is the automagical tool that we all seek. The Naca Project, from Publicitas, promises to “transcode” (that’s “automagical transformation” for non-technical folks) COBOL code to Java.
Pierre & I presented the NACA project at Jazoon 2009 in Zurich. It was another nice opportunity to present our automated solution to migrate (we say “transcode” within Publicitas) 100% automatically a Cobol application to its iso-functional Java equivalent. – link
The tools are available as open source from the following site. I’ve embedded the shared slideshow from the conference below.
I always thought that having an HTPC would save me some money because I could record programs and I might become a more efficient consumer of media. Also, by being able to record shows and play flash-based media on the big screen, I feel like I can reduce my cable spend.
I decided to build my own HTPC and learn along the way. The first step is to build the platform, so I decided to buy everything but the TV Tuner card in this go.
Case – $100
I started off by purchasing a case. After doing some research, I picked the Antec NSK 2480. It has many attractive features, such as it’s form factor (Micro-ATX). It still holds two HDs though, so I can put in a RAID. It has a decent power supply and was built to be quiet. I purchased the case for about 100 dollars at Microcenter.
Motherboard – $75
I bought the ASUS M3N78-VM with NVIDIA GeForce 8200 HDMI AMD Motherboard for this box. I liked several things about this board. First, it has onboard HDMI video capabilities, so I don’t need a separate graphics card. It is an “enterprise” edition so I figure there will be a lot of support for it out there. It is also purported to be green.
CPU - $60
I bought the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e Brisbane 2.6GHz Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor to go along with this. I read some great reviews about this chip, and the lower power consumption and heat characteristics were what sold me.
Cables and Accessories – $6 OKGEAR 6 ft. HDMI cable, male to male, black Model GC6HDMI1
So I spent a total of $452 for the initial build. I think that with a cable card I can keep it to under $600.
Note that the CPU came with a stock heatsink and that had thermal grease on it. Also, I decided to forgo the DVD player for this round and install from a USB stick. Lastly, I plan on using VNC from my computer to control the box, but I may end up purchasing an IR card to make things a bit easier.
The next few posts will go through and describe my findings as I build the machine. Also, I will load up a picture or two so the non-technical folks can get a sense of what I’m building…a box!
It must be a slow news day, since CNN is carrying the following video of Obama taking care of a fly with Miyagi-like reflexes. It’s only a matter of time until someone starts a Barack Obama Facts website.
You have to love this – an open source car. The developers hope that by keeping the environment open source that it will inspire people to hack it to suit their needs.
A group of investors and engineers based in Britain has unveiled a hydrogen city car they hope will revolutionize the auto industry with its innovative leasing structure and open source development — even though it looks like a Converse Chuck Taylor.
