30
Aug
Upgrading Windows Home Server
Its been a week since I have finished placement and I decided as well as preparing for univeristy which if I am honest has gone as far as checking if I have any days off, thought I would take on a not so small project. Upgrading my Windows Home Server! Its getting on for 3 years old and the hardware is much older and well due for an upgrade.
Its not cost very much so far as upgrading my main desktop a couple of months back. I have a spare motherboard and memory as well as a power supply. The only missing pieces are a CPU and case. I am using my desktop CPU and have a new faster one on order for my main PC. The case, well I have purchased a new one as well as a new hardware as I’d prefer not to use my old drives that are probably starting to degrade.
The case I have got for it is a Fractal Design Define R2. I had seen it a while ago and was impressed with its 7 internal drive bays and sound proofing features. First impressions I see these are actually working and its current near silient sitting on my worktop while its copying data across from the old home server.
29
Jun
Arduino
My latest purchase came in the post today, although it was rather late. I got my self a little starter kit for experimenting with an Arduino board. Arduino is an open source programmable PCB. Its quite jazzy and this evening before it got too hot in my room and I headed for the pub, I setup my first circuit using the handy manual that came with the kit.
The kit its self if quite cheap, £55 and it comes with everything to get started, lots of cool LED’s! A mini servo and motor, push buttons as well as photo resister. I’m not going to reel off the list of its contents you can check it out here.
I’ll leave you now with some nice photos from my iPhone but more on this later and what my plans are with it!
28
May
All Set-up!
Well I’ve setup my awesome new 24in monitors and already watched a couple of BluRay movies to bask in the awesomeness that is 1080p. I got my self two BenQ G2420HDBL 24″. I have to say the quality it pretty good. These were very much a self birthday present if you like but I’d been after some new monitors since starting placement. The BenQ comes highly recommended and the quality and price is pretty neat, its got over 40 reviews on OCUK.
Anyway, another picture…
28
May
New Monitors
I woke up late today for work. I’m quite glad I did, as I walked to the door I heard a loud knock. It was DPD with my overclockers order… Two new 24in monitors…
1
May
MythTV and XBMC
I said a couple of weeks back that I have been playing around with MythTV. At first I installed Mythbuntu, messed around a little then restored the computer back to XP using Windows Home Server but then I decided i wanted to have a play with Mythtv on Gentoo I tried but my CD drive couldn’t burn the Gentoo disc so I got annoyed and reinstalled mythbuntu.
I’ve now been recording various TV shows with easy and no real issues for the last couple of weeks. Although I have to say I have not really hit the limts and don’t really watch that much TV. I got a second TV card so that I could watch and and record a different channel but I have to get the proper cables to split the ariel feed.
It was nice to wake up at a normal time and watch the Chinese Grand Prix before the replay on BBC One in the afternoon. The web interface it pretty simple to use and I’ve set it all up so that if at work I remember I want to watch something I can login and set it to record. Bet Sky+ doesn’t let you do that now does it! I have a suspicion that it doesn’t properly flag up commercials but I’ve only watched recorded shows from the BBC channels so not sure yet.
The whole system though is pretty much complete now I got a MCE remote control off ebay which gives its the proper feeling of a TV rather than controlling it from a keyboard. I’ve had to wait a while though I think it got held up at the airport what with the UK airspace being shutdown, it was a seller in Hong Kong.
I was surprised at how easy the remote was to set-up, I just had to select the MCE remote from the Myth Control panel and reboot. I expected an evening of a mixture of googling and pulling my hair out…
I’ve been pretty much mainly using XBMC as a frontend as XBMC can access Myth’s recorded files which is pretty neat! Next step though is to hook it up to my 5.1 speakers, the Logitech 5500′s and get a HD tuner, oh and a bigger TV and a new laptop!
3
Nov
Fitted The Xtreamer Cooler
I fitted the Xtreamer cooler the other night. I was a little concerned how easy the how-to made the whole process look, nothing is easy. To be fair though once I’d got the side panel off, which must have been stuck down with the worlds strongest double-sided tape the whole thing was a breeze to complete. It even looks good as an end product with the cooler attached. On a plus note it worked afterwards. I hadn’t slipped and ploughed a screwdriver across the chipset.
I haven’t however watched it enough since to see if the cooler actually works but reading around others seem to think so. Its also stopped acting up. After a little playing around after my previous post, here. It turned out the Windows Home Server wasn’t 100% happy with the Xtreamer on the network. Its fine now, the problem was the WHS, at idle spun down the hard drives when they were not in use and when the Xtreamer started to stream a file there was a delay while the hard-drives spin back up. This is ok when your streaming to Boxee, a PC etc as there is about a 2 second delay the Xtreamer however seems to get confused. I think I’ll file a bug report when I can test this more.
On a similar note the Xtreamer with its HDMI output is pushing me towards getting a HD TV. I’ve been watching the new series Life on BBC/iPlayer and the awesome shots they have in HD are just amazing but I’m stuck watching it on my PC monitor… for now.. any recommendations?