Will Slusher.net

So I promised a non-computer-crap post sometime soon… This isn’t it… :)

I just wanted to do a little update on the various computer projects…

The new server is still up and running like a champ… Once I got the bios and jumpper settings straightened out it has been nice and stable… It’s also very pretty looking… :) I’m hoping to have some pics up soon….

The desktop is also now up and running… after some thought, I decided to make it a dual boot system, so I could have both a windows and a linux desktop… it took a couple revisions, but I have most everything up and running there… the only lingering issue is that with the latest linux kernel I can’t boot with USB support… not quite sure what’s going on there, but for now a little “nousb” option in the boot settings has done the trick…

The bigger news is the MythTV box, which as turned out surprisingly well… As you will recall, I basically took the old MB and processor from my desktop, the case from Whei’s exploding computer of death, the powersupply from my desktop, and a couple old tuner cards and threw them all together with a new DVD/CD-RW drive and a 40GB harddrive to make a nice little box to run MythTV (and open source DVR) box.

To make things a bit easier on myself, I basically followed this guy’s HOW TO… it makes things SO much easier than just following the documentation on the site…

After getting through the basic setup, things kinda worked, but there a couple of lingering issues… First off, the quality of both tuner cards was pretty crappy… also, I couldn’t get any audio…

I did some more searching, and a lot of testing… finally I reread the HOWTO and found some extra info on setting up sound that made things a lot easier… Once I got that figured out, I did some testing a realized that one of my tuners wasn’t putting out audio… So, I simplified the system a bit and just went with the one, working, tuner…

There were still some issue with quality though… basically the picture was really bad and the channels were all off by one… So I did some more searching on that particular model and turned up some specific setting to put in the modprobe.conf file that corrected that issue…

So, where am I now? The box is up and running, auto logging in as the mythtv user and launching the myth front and back ends… Sound and picture are good, and I’ve done a couple of test recordings that turned out pretty well… I finally dug through the settings and figured out how to change the theme (easy to find) and the OSD (buried deep in the playback settings) so that things look cool too…

Now there are only a couple of things left to do…

One is a remote… I’ve ordered a SnapStream Firefly remote which apparently, altho RF, is supported in a way by the latest lirc distro… that should come in tomorrow, so there should be much tinkering to be done there…

Also, there’s a slight audio issue to resolve. I only have (and want) the one set of speakers on my desk, but I now have three computers with working audio that I want to use with it… I tried just putting a three-way splitter on my speaker inputs, but that failed miserably… basically, I his the same issue that I did with my carPC… when I do that, only one comes thru… I’ve decided what I need is a little mini-mixer… I did some searching and found one online for pretty cheap… This should allow me to run all three inputs in there, balance them, then send one output my speakers…

And then, I should finally be done… :)

Yeah, right… ;)

Ok, that’s enough for now… I think it’s time to go play a little scrabble with the woman I love… :)

…that I may have taken step 19 a little too seriously… :)

The parts for my new server, as well as the new power supply for my desktop PC all arrived last week… and there was much rejoicing and much tinkering… Well, rejoicing might not be eitirely correct… there was rejoicing… the frustration… then confusion… then gnashing of teeth and harsh words… then deep breaths… then realization… then more rejoicing…

Long stroy short, I ran into a few problems with both installs…

With the new server, the issues were mainly due to what I consider some rather poor documentation on several of the parts manufacturers…

After getting the new PC completely assembled I tried to power it on… I say tried, ’cause, frankly, it didn’t… power on that is… or maybe it did, but then powered itself right back off again… I don’t quite remember… Anyway, I did some searching and finally discovered that I needed to change a jumper on the motherboard from the default setting (FSB multiplier of 133) to a different setting (FSB Multiplier of 166) to work with my processor…

After that change, things got a little better… I got the system up, installed Fedora Core 3, and all seemed well… I say seemed because, I would discover, all was not well… After heading to be that night, I noticed, about 10 minutes after I turned out the lights, that BAM, the PC had powered itself off… I did some more testing the next evening and sometime it would come on and run, some times it would only power on for a few seconds… sometimes I had to pull the plug to reset it before it would come up again…

My gut told me it was a memory issue, and I was beginning to think I’d gotten some bad DIMMs when I discovered a post on the forums for the manufacturer saying that for this particular brand, you needed to change the DIMM voltage in the bios to 2.7 volts… I checked, and mine was defaulting to 2.5…

After making that change not only did things say on, but things speeded up as well…

I’m happy to report that, at this point, the new server (I’ve christened it “Niflheim” after the mythological norse realm of ice and cold) is up and running… and currently serving this web page to you… :)

My desktop PC is another matter… I was expecting the power supply replacement to be fairly cut and dry… he…he…he… right… :)

Swapping out the parts was pretty easy… I mean, heck, you unplug things, unscrew 4 screws, swap it around, and BAM, done…

I also decided to swap out the heatsink and fan on the chipset because the stock one had become clogged with dust and would no longer spin… That was a litte frustrating because of the proximity of the chipset heatsink to some other components, but it wasn’t too bad, all in all…

The chipset heatsink had some old, cheap looking thermal compound on it, so I cleaned that off and replaced it with some of the good stuff… For a long time, I thought this step was my undoing…

After getting everything back together, I tried to power the PC back on… again, I say tried because it didn’t… power on that is…

When I flipped the switch on the power supply, the lights on the MB glowed and all looked well… when I hit the power button, again, lights came on, drive spun up… but no video and now bios beep… hmmmmm….

I thought first it was a video card issue, so I borrowed one from work and swapped it out… still nothing…

Then I began to worry that I had seriously messed something up replacing the chipset heatsink… I popped it off and noticed that the thermal goop had oozed out and onto the motherboard… I don’t think the stuff is electrically conductive, but I wasn’t sure… Anyway, I cleaned that up and put the heatsink back on… still nothing…

I disconnected everything but the bare essentials… still nothing…

I finally, at that point, decided I had somehow killed the motherboard… so I did a little searching and found a new one that looked pretty cool and only moderately streatched my budget beyond what I wanted to spend on this project…

So, in preparation for that, I pulled everything out of the case and decided to do a bit more tinkering… I pulled the motherboard out, and decided to pull of the processor too and make sure everything was well there… When I did I noticed that the old thermal goop was more rocky than goopy… So I cleaned that off, and put everything back together nicely… Just for kicks then, I hooked power and the other essentials to the board outside of the case and powered it on… and, low and behold, it worked… Apparently, when I pulled the power supply, I must have nudged the processor heatsink just enough to make the processor not make a good connection…

Sooooo… Now I had a delima… Do I just put everything back together and send the new stuff back when it arrives? Probably the frugal thing to do, and probably what I should have done… but, it just didn’t feel right…

So I decided to go the other way… I ordered a new processor to go with the new motherboard… So, here’s the current, newly revised plan:

• Old motherboard and processor go in spare case (from Whei’s exploding PC of death in the preceeding post) along with the old power supply, 2 spare TV tuner cards, and the video card out of my old server (once Scott gets the new box configured as a backup MX for techie.net)
• Desktop case gets modified so that the powersupply will mount in the correct direction… Why the case manufacturer decided to mount it upside down I have no idea.
• New motherboard and processor go in the new case, along with the new power supply and all the old pieces and parts that were formally in there…
• Desktop gets a nice fresh install of Windows XP SP2
• The other PC gets a nice fresh install of Fedore Core 3 and with some luck and, I’m sure, and lot of tinkering and gnashing of teeth and harsh words, will become a MythTV box…

So yeah… that’s about where things stand computing wise…

Actually, one thing that is kind of neat, is that, for the past week, I’ve been using the new server as my primary desktop… and I must say, since the last time I tried linux as a desktop, things have come a long way… I mean, I was actually able to change the resolution of my screen and get the sound working without consulting a single man page or doing a single google search… :)

Anyway, that’s enough rambling for now… maybe soon I’ll have a post that’s not all about computer crap… :)

Quick follow up to my previous post… I think everything with the new PC for my parents has been resolved. Luckilly the blown power supply didn’t appear to have damaged anything else. I ended up pulling the motherboard from the old case and moving everything to a nice, gently used, black case that I had… a few matching parts and a modem later, everything was working fine again… I kept it up and running for a couple days, just to be safe (no smoke and flames this time) then delivered it to my parents the weekend before last… Hopefully my dad will have a bit of an easier time with this one… I think part of his problems with the old PC was that it was just to sluggish… When things didn’t happen quickly, he’d think something was wrong and would start clicking other things and would end up doing who knows what… :)

Anyway, with that project in the back, I’ve decided to undertake a couple more computing builds… :)

First off, I’m going to build a new linux box to host this site and the couple other things the current box handles… Unlike the current and previous version, this new server will actually be constructed of all new parts, not just the hand-me-downs from my older desktops…

I decided to get a little fancy with this one too… :) Originally, I was toying with the idea of building another mini-itx form factor PC, like the car PC… But, after some more thinking I decided that wasn’t worth the hassle and expense… I then started looking at some the the small “cube” PC cases, but most of those seemed to come with their own propriatary motherboards, which was kind of a turn off for me..

Finally, I opted for the Aspire Q-Pack case. It’s a litte bigger than some of the small form factor and cube cases but it supports standard micro-ATX motherboards and comes “pre-modded” with a couple of windows, lighted fans, and some other cool features…

The rest of the specs are pretty basic… I decided to stick with AMD, an picked up an Athlon XP 2800+ processor (same as my desktop), Abit motherboard (I’ve had good luck with them in the past), 512MB of RAM and a DVD/CD-RW combo drive… nothing _too_ exciting, but it should yield a pretty cool box…

I’m still waiting for all the parts to arrive, but thus far, I think my favorite thing about the new system is the install instructions for the case… I’m particularly fond of step 19….

Anyway, it should be a fun little project… Once I get that up and running (I think I’m going with Fedora Core 3) and get all my web services, etc transfered over, I’m going to try my hand at building a MythTV box (just to copy a couple of friends of mine)… I’m not going to go for anything too extreme… Really, I think I just want something that I could use as an upstairs TV… :) I’m probably going to put two TV-Tuner cards in it (’cause I have two laying around) but I doubt I’ll ever use it to record anything… that’s what Tivo is for… :)

Anyway… I think that’s about it in the way of tinkering updates… In other news, Kris got back this week from her trip to Arizona and the Grand Canyon… Aside from the usual joys of extend family visits, I think she had a pretty good time… We both agree that we definitely need to take a trip there together at some point… some of the pictures she brought back were just breath taking…

Also, Kris began moving into her new apartment yesterday (with a little help from me :)). All-in-all, it seems like a pretty nice place… she definitely has a lot more space in her room, and I think the kitchen has a lot more storage space (despite beening kind of long and narrow)… Also, all the rooms have their own bathrooms, which is kind of nice… There are some things that the landlord will hopefully fix (some doors and cabinets that are in a bit of disrepair, etc)… but all in all, I think she and her roommates will like it a lot…

Anyway, I think that’s about it from the updates department… I suppose I should probably get to work… ;)