Revision as of 08:11, 16 June 2008

My username is bmac2, I am not a JR, or anything like that, on an old bbs in the late 80s early 90s one bbs required there to be at least one number on your username, and i was using bmac (short for Barry McCormick) and I added a 2 to it. Been using that name almost exclusively online since.

I was born in Alabama and have both my BS and MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Alabama. I lived in Texas for about 10 years total, 4 years in the army at Ft. Hood, over a year in Austin, then a good 3 in Houston. I then lived New Orleans from 1997 until 2001 when I moved to Salt Lake City, Utah for family reasons.

My LMCE setup is currently as detailed below. It is far from being complete, but I am being hounded by our resident wiki nazi ( g you KNOW who you are!!!) so here goes.

Core/Hybrid

I use a hybrid core in my setup. I have my office/workspace/media room in the basement of my house. Since my core is down here it makes more sense for me to use it as a hybrid and not have another computer running.

Motherboard

ABIT AN-M2 ver 2.0  Socket AM2 940 Processor with 2000MT/s system bus
Micro-ATX form factor (244mm x 244mm)
1x PCI-E X16 slot 
1x PCI-E X1 slot 
2 PCI slots
built in gigabit network card
2 IDE channels
4 sata ports
built in sound card with digital out
                 

Processor

AMD 4600+ Retail box processor with AMD branded CPU Fan

Memory

4 GIG DDR 800 ram

Video Card

GeFORCE Nvidia 8600GT PCI-E 16x with 512 Meg of Memory

Hard Drives

IDE - Maxtor 300 GB hard drive
SATA - Western Digital 1TB green power hard drive
Software Raid managed by LMCE
SATA - Seagate 300 GB drive
SATA - Western Digital 160 GB drive

DVD drive

Dual layer Memorex DVD/CD/CDR reader/writer

Media card reader

no name media reader that reads 6 types of media cards.  Fits in a 5 1/4 drive bay

Case

An old case I have had for a while, nothing special except I put a brand new "quiet" power supply in it for the new
motherboard.  The power supply is a CG Super Power brand that I got at a local store.  480 Watt Supply with a 
"silent fan".  The size was based on my running the 4600+ processor and 6 hard drives, plus dvd, etc.

Mouse and keyboard

Logitech wireless ergonomic mouse and a generic HP keyboard.  My core sits next to my desk, so 
I don't uses any fancy remotes for it, just a mouse and a keyboard.

Serial Port card

The new motherboards do NOT have serial ports, so I bought a PCI-E X1 slot serial port card.  I need 
two serial ports, one for my projector control via serial interface, the second to try to get a vfd 
display working on the system.

Bluetooth

A cheap targus generic bluetooth dongle (avoid these, at least get a trendnet or better!!!!)

Projector

Optoma DLP projector Model EP-721
Native resolution 1024x768, but capable of1080i.
Projector actually made by a division of Epson.  Nice projector for under $500.

Den Media Director

Generic PC built to be the MD

Motherboard

ABIT AN-M2 ver 2.0  Socket AM2 940 Processor with 2000MT/s system bus
Micro-ATX form factor (244mm x 244mm)
1x PCI-E X16 slot 
1x PCI-E X1 slot 
2 PCI slots
built in gigabit network card
2 IDE channels
4 sata ports
built in sound card with digital out

Processor

AMD 5600+ retail with AMD fan

Memory

4 GIG DDR 800 ram

Video Card

Nvidia 7200 PCI card

Hard drives

NONE - this system network boots using PXE, so no drives needed, which makes it quieter, use less power, and 
       generate less heat

DVD Drive

DVD reader/writer

Bluetooth

Trendnet Bluetooth dongle

Remote

WII controller set up as a remote

TV Capture Card

Hauppauge PVR-150 (non mce and non remote version)

Satellite Box

DirecTV Dual tuner pvr Satellite box, model R-15

IR Control

USB-UIRT with a set of IR extender dongles

TV

CRAPPY Zenith 36 inch TUBE tv.  Hope to make it go away soon.

Stereo Reciever

15 year old low end Onkyo receiver.

Master Bedroom Media Director

  Motherboard -  ???/

  Processor -  ?????

Kitchen Media Director

  Motherboard -  ???/

  Processor -  ?????

Phone System

One of the MAJOR subsystems, and in my opinion, one of the most powerful and useful subsystems in LMCE is the Asterisk/FreePBX phone system. It allows you to do cool things like assign extensions to family members, give everyone in your family their own mailbox, etc. Connected to a VOIP provider, your phone system can now do things that it never could before. Forget the phone company and run your own phones the way you want them to run.

VOIP Provider

Broadvoice with a second number and the international package so I can place obscene calls to lmce users
in other countries.

Cisco 7970 Phone

The cadilac of phones.  These have the color touch screen, can act as an orbiter (remote control) and handle
'handle multiple extension, custom wallpapers, custom rings, etc.  Very much plug and play when you follow the
wiki page on this phone set up by TSCHAK.  Mine is running the Cisco SCCP ( or skinny as it is nicknamed )
protocol.  If you can catch one of these on ebay at a reasonable price, get it.  They are a very nice phone
with built in speakerphone, headset jacks, hold, transfer, etc.

Cisco 7960 Phone

Just one step down from the 7970, but can be bought at a much cheaper prices used on places such as ebay. 
This model has 6 phone line/extension capability, but no color and no touchscreen.  It is a very nice solid
phone, like most Cisco products.  Mine is running SCCP and was set up using the directions for the 7970, which
defaults to the sccp protocol.

Cisco 7912 Phone

A single line phone with no fancy features like speakerphone, multiple extension, but a good solid phone with
a very clean looking silver top and a nice quality small monochrome display on it.  I picked mine up for
around $20 + shipping on ebay.  Like all my phones, it is running SCCP protocol.

Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA)

I bought an unlocked linksys PAP2T-NA adapter.  Make sure if you are buying an adapter off the
Internet that the model has the -NA on it.  Any model without the -NA is locked to a provider like Vonage,
etc.  While they CAN be unlocked, it is a very painful process, and does not always work, depending on a ton
of factors when you start hacking them.  My advice, if you have one, search the internet and play, but buy
yourself one that is unlocked by design and use it.  Even if you unlock one of the vonage ones, they can still
possibly give you trouble.  I think mine cost me like $48 or so online.  This adapter is wired to the phone
wires (cat 3 type original phone lines) that are running through the house.  So we can plug in any standard 
phone device, and can plug the satellite dish STBs to the phone line for programming updates.  The second port
of the ATA is set up as a fax line to receive faxes, or send them if needed.  I changed the default fax line
in LMCE to aim at this extension. 

Analog Cordless Phones

My wife has a set of the uniden cordless phones that has the base one that plugs into an analog phone
line and the other 2 handsets attach to it wirelessly.  The entire reason I put the ATA in was so she could
keep those phones and use them. These along with all the analog phones are set up on a seperate extension. 
While you can't call a specific one of them, you can call the analog extension and ring them seperately. 

Fax Machine

YES I know it is old school, but I have it, and an analog port, so what the hell.  It is a 8 or 9 year old SHARP
UX-510 Plain paper fax.  My plans are to set up a more sophisticated fax system with lmce, but, this was fun
to do just to say I did.