Labor Day weekend ... Truth in advertising ...

[Shane R. Monroe]

So, instead of "a nice quiet three day weekend" where I sit around and watch movies and do nothing ... I basically went all out and hit the "honey do" list - and my own list.

I wanted to share the "computer" side of things - my family doesn't appreciate the magnitude of what I've done ... I had to share with SOMEONE.

Our house consists of 5 desktops;
- Whitebox (TV capture box, digital hub)
- Shanebox (my desktop)
- Christinabox (my wife's PC)
- Gamebox (my MAME cab/kid's computer)
- Filebox (central file server - backup repository - overflow)

Several issues were plaguing the household;
- Filebox and Gamebox; noisy as hell. The CPU/case fans were like listening to twin Xbox 360s. The filebox power supply was going out too.
- Upgrade the Whitebox; more hard drive space, better video card, better CPU. The current one is in a Dell box
- Redistribute the wealth of the roughly 2.5TB of hard drive space more appropriately.

Let's start with the Filebox. Decently powered box (largely wasted on a file server). I started off cleaning the CPU fan. Quieter, but still loud. Got a CPU fan on the side for a future project. More in a minute.

The gamebox was in this big scary "alienware" looking box I got from a friend for free (lots of blue lights and crap) - and it's so big, it was like WEDGED into my MAME cab. I decided to go with a mid-size tower case and cut it down a bit in size and make it easier to access from the back.

So I transferred all the internals from the alienbox to the new box. Overall, it worked out well. Only missed hooking up the DVD drive before putting the whole thing back in the MAME cab. Since it's the girl's box, I rarely hit it and do updates. So I did Windows/AV/etc updates on it.

That was the easy one. After junking the case, and seeing how good it looked, I decided to buy a new case for the whitebox. It's HIGH visibility in the living room and the old Dell case looked like ass. That, and I needed more room for hard drives I went out and got a very nice case - in fact - it even looks like a speaker! (I'll post pics later) Naturally, the Dell internals couldn't be moved out (forgot all about that).

What to do ... I was set to buy another MB/CPU/RAM combo, but just didn't see the need ... maybe, there would be another way.

Right, the filebox .. it's LOW visibility (under my desk) and pretty damn overpowered (P4/3.2Ghz). Let's gut it - build a new whitebox out of it.

Now, the whitebox has a LOT of configuration; Beyond TV, Media Portal, Firefly - lots of settings ... lose'em and the family will revolt. LOTS of backing up, copying.

Lots of little problems along the way.

First off; distributing hard drives without copying 200+GB per drive around. I wanted to INCREASE the size of the whitebox, leaving an adequate amount for the filebox.

Couple this with the fact that I inadvertantly broke one of the CPU fan clips, causing the meshing of the CPU and fan/heatsink to slip, making the CPU overheat constantly (took me a LONG time to find this - it wasn't apparently). I wasn't able to get a replacement right away, so I returned to the "new" filebox - the old Dell box.

Now, this should have been easy - right? Just adding drives, creating a new windows install (never use an old XP install on new hardware), restoring the config, etc.

Well - normally - yeah. I DID forget, however, that IDE2 on the systemboard was flakey - which is why I'd put in a PCI-to-IDE card. I figured, I could put in 8 drives all total, but suffice to say, after a lot of drive swapping and BSing, I remembered the issue and started using IDE1 and the PCI IDE card. A couple of drives went kablooey (didn't lose data, one was empty, one was dying, but I got the data off). A couple of drives gave me some troubles on the PCI card (I see jumpers in my sleep now).

I got 5 drives into the system - now with about 1.5TB. Got a FRESH XP on it. Fresh copies of all the necessities. The configs restored beautifully - except the capture cards had to be redetected by BTV and I had to change like 40 paths in Media Portal for my content.

Another great problem... The onboard Ethernet port wouldn't detect, and they didn't offer it at MSI's homepage. I have a great service called DriverAgent.com (the best $30 a year I spend) that will automagically pull down ANY drive for ANY device (pretty much) without knowing CRAP - all browser based, super intellgent. Great stuff. Even works in Opera. But how do you get an ethernet driver from the internet without a working NIC? ... Steal from Paul to pay Peter. I snagged a NIC from my wife's computer, it was detected by XP, I got on Driver Agent, got the other NIC online - pulled the other one. Heh. What a pain in the ass.

As a bonus, during all the moving around and hub bub, my internet seemed to go down (as did my cable). After awhile, it turned out to be a combo "who'dve thunk it" problem; bad cable and a shorted out coax. Real pain.

Finally, the whitebox went up.

Got the Dell up now - only a couple of drives in it - but will add more later when I get some good deal on a phat drive.

Wow ...

[TheAlien]

Um, wow. And I thought I had it bad with cleaning my apartment, scrubbing down the walls in the kitchen and bathroom, and trying to find source of the cat smell leftover from my Nashville trip. (turned out to be the trash can. Friend came to visit the cat and cleaned the litter box directly into the trash can. Took forever to get rid of the smell) But I bet you had a lot more fun than I did. I'd much rather frustrate the hell out of myself with my computers than clean ANYTHING! And it sounds like you now have several sweet systems as a result.

[yuckymucky]

Dells are the worst machines for moving parts into new cases. I have moved a few for friends and they take forever. You can count on spending a decent amount of time trying to figure out where to connect buttons and lights and then more time getting a processor heatsink fan combo.

[WorknMan]

Dells are the worst machines for moving parts into new cases. I have moved a few for friends and they take forever. You can count on spending a decent amount of time trying to figure out where to connect buttons and lights and then more time getting a processor heatsink fan combo.

Well, that's kind of why you get Dells .. so you don't have to do that sort of crap yourself

[yuckymucky]

Well, that's kind of why you get Dells .. so you don't have to do that sort of crap yourself

Haha I am going to have to ask them about that, it pretty much seems like Dell should start using that as a tag line.

[Womp]

I passed on Shane's original post as I don't like to read. I'll wait for the movie version "Whats in Shane's Shed?" episode.

[Shane R. Monroe]

You lazy bitch

On a lesser happy note - I'm unable to find my programming folder amongst the rabble and shifted around drives. I have an uneasy feeling that it was on one of the dead drives. This would be all my programming projects over the last 8 years or so, including the source code to vs.Ball and Kablooey Redux. I found a backup of a couple of titles, like what would appear to be a recentish copy of Dino Eggs and Project Trapshoot. I'm going to be distraught if I don't have another backup somewhere. Sigh.

[Spin]

Please feel free to tell more of the white box.
Never tire of it.
One day I shall replicate.

You really didnt not back up your source code right>
Rule number 1 back up.
Bet you have it on an unmarked disk.
Good luck!

[Shane R. Monroe]

That's what bothers me the most is ... that I DID have a backup. But it's MIA. I can even SEE the disc ... it says PROGRAMMING BACKUP.

My last hope is that Bryan's wife still has his computer unmolested. I do believe he had all my source code to use as reference.

Fortunately, I gave away Meteor on the RGR year 7 disc. So that's available. I DO have a copy of Dino Eggs and Project Trapshoot on the whitebox (dunno how up to date tho). So what I lost was source code to vs.Ball, Kablooey Redux, my port of Psycho Squares WIP, and all my little code libraries I put together for code samples.

I've been a bit grouchy the last couple of days about it .. I guess I gotta get over it.

Oh, found ANOTHER dead drive - so that's THREE dead drives in the process. Seems unusually high. Two IBM Deskstar 250GB and one Western Digital 200GB.

Time to wait for a nice 750GB from Fry's to go on sale.

As for the whitebox, I changed to the FFSHOW filters so I could control the gamma (Xvids are always a bit dark), now the video stutters from time to time on large delta changes on the image. I really need to figure out how to control that on the Xvid binaries so I don't have to use FFSHOW.

[miner2049er]

Oh, found ANOTHER dead drive - so that's THREE dead drives in the process. Seems unusually high. Two IBM Deskstar 250GB and one Western Digital 200GB.

So long as they power up try Spinrite. It has saved me before now.