Revision as of 06:58, 15 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

  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

  Hard drives  -  NONE

  DVD Drive    -  DVD reader/writer

  Bluetooth    -  Trendnet Bluetooth dongle

  Remote       - WII controller set up as a remote

  TV Capture   - 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.

Phone System

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.

Master Bedroom Media Director

  Motherboard -  ???/

  Processor -  ?????