User:Ray N
Background
I'm a Professional Engineer with a 1999 undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering. Born and raised in beautiful Puerto Rico (http://welcome.topuertorico.org/index.shtml). Started getting involved with LinuxMCE in March 2009. I have development history in hardware and software.
Our original intent was 1) to be able to watch some TV in the living room as there was no cableTV connection in that room (bizarre construction arrangement, we know), and to watch DVD (or BluRay) movies. In reality, something very extremely simple for the functionality that LinuxMCE provides. To tackle the sending the cableTV signal up to the living room without having to lay coax cables around the house, I thought, why not sending it through the network. So I started looking at options and that's how we came to LinuxMCE. LinuxMCE is used in our house primarily for media (recorded TV, videos and music).
I decided to build our own system as we wanted a nice looking "appliance-like" box that would take the place of the DVD player. We have a very simple one-machine Hybrid setup. This is my original shopping list from March 2009.
| Item | Cost | Description | Website |
|---|---|---|---|
| Case | $58.99 | hec Black 0.7mm Thickness SECC Steel 7KJ9 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case - Retail | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811121068 |
| CPU | $78.00 | AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 Kuma 2.7GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 95W Dual-Core black edition | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103300 |
| Motherboard | $89.99 | ASUS M3N78-EM AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8300 HDMI Micro ATX AMD | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131354 |
| RAM | $22.99 | Kingston HyperX 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104012 |
| Hard Drive | $34.99 | Western Digital Caviar Blue WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822135106 |
| BluRay Player | $99.99 | LITE-ON Black 6X Blu-ray DVD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA Internal 6X Blu-Ray DVD ROM & 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Model iHES106-29 - OEM | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106270 |
| TV Capture | $159.99 | SiliconDust HDHomeRun Network-based Dual Digital HDTV Tuner Ethernet Interface | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815327005 |
| 2nd NIC | $19.99 | Rosewill RC-401-EX 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Gigabit Low Profile Network Card 1 x RJ45 - Retail | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833166015 |
| Transceiver | $55.00 | USB UIRT | http://www.usbuirt.com/order.htm |
| Remote | $80.83 | Gyration GYR3101US Universal Infrared / RF Remote Control | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16880105001&Tpk=gyration |
| Sound Card | --- | Realtek ALC1200 - 8 Channels | In MoBo |
| Graphics card | --- | NVIDIA GeForce 8300 | In MoBo |
| Thermal Compound | $5.99 | Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835100007 |
| LinuxMCE | FREE!!! | Woooohooo! | http://www.linuxmce.com/ |
Total: $711.74 Did not include shipping and handling.
Setup
Hybrid System
Currently (March, 2009) using LinuxMCE 0710.
Other stuff
- Connected to a Samsung LN-T4061F 40" TFT-LCD display through HDMI running UI2 with alpha-blending @1080p
- Had to purchase a powerline networking adapter because of the location of the system.
Installation
- Used LinuxMCE 0710 DVD
- I was following many of the Troubleshooting instructions in ASUS M3N78-EM
- Like Wiki said, had to change in BIOS, SATA mode to AHCI to get boot going
- DVD installation; selected option to keep partition as is. Installation takes a while, to the point where the display went into sleep mode. Don't panic!
- Installed latest nVidia drivers (180.29) as described in Display_Drivers#Latest_Drivers
- For HDHomeRun detection of LMCE, had to make sure the Linksys was not giving HDHomeRun its IP. So I temporarily disconnected DHCP from the Linksys.
- Allowed access to the webadmin from my home network. In the web admin page, Wizard->Security->Outside Access as indicated in Outside_Access
- To see my shared pictures; in the Admin webpage, changed shared directory to use LMCE's directory structure (in the "Device data" area of the shared drive information, PK_Users changed to: "Pluto's structure"). Added /public/data/pictures to my Pictures directory, then moved all the pictures in there. Re-synchronize.
Plans
- To actively contribute to the LinuxMCE community and progress.
Will be adding more to this page as time permits.
