Latest revision as of 17:42, 2 April 2014

Barry McCormick
Douglas Street
Salt Lake City, Utah 84102
USA
VOIP Phone: 801-438-3590

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_WinTV-PVR-150_MCE (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 -  ?????

Mobile Orbiters

• Nokia N800 tablet pc
• Compaq Ipaq hx2755 color

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 hone 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 cadillac of phones. These have the color touch screen, can act as an orbiter (remote control) and 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.

Network Layout

As a person who works a lot as a network person, my network often changes to suite the latest thing on my plate. But below is the base portion of my network, and what runs my systems. My network is only 10/100 at the moment, but I intend to upgrade to gigabit at first oportunity. The switch you choose makes ALL the difference in the sound quality of your calls. I had to remove a fairly nice managed 3Com switch from my network and replace it with an an ancient Cisco 300FastHub. That cleared all the echo of my phones.