Jarrett's Tech Blog

Intel SSD Deal and Price Watch

I'm in the market for an SSD but the prices are still sky high. I'd like to do a fresh install on my desktop machine and install Windows 7. My current Vista install is running out space due to the WinSxs folder. A new SSD would be a perfect reason for a reinstall and a nice speed boost.

I've been running an SSD in my laptop for about 5 months and I love it. The speed and battery life is incredible.

Back in August 2009, I was lucky to snag an Intel X25-M G2 from Newegg for $229.

The price immediately sky rocketed right after my purchase it and it hasn't settled back down since.

I just installed this cool new extension for Chrome called The Camelizer. It watches the price of products at various web sites and shows a graph. I'll definitely use this tool to find the right time to buy.

Update: I was watching the OCZ Agility drive with Camelizer and it notified me of a recent price drop. I was extremely tempted as it also came with a mail-in rebate the lowered the price to $129. This is a great deal for a 60GB SSD. However, I just didn't feel the time was right as I haven't found a cheap copy of Win7 yet. Anyway, within a few hours it sold out!

Posted by JarrettV on January 30 at 10:41 PM

Comments (1)

Tiny HTPC Movie and Hulu Box Part 5 Conclusion

The two 50mm fans arrived and I put them into their new home. To line them up in the back, I raised them up on a small piece of wood and tie-wrapped them into place. They are the perfect height for the case. I used some aluminum to fill in the blank spaces. I got lazy at the end and used a wood block to plug the last space.

The HTPC made too much noise with these new fans so I made a couple modifications:

Change fans to run from 5 volt instead of 12 volt (from 5000rpm down to 2100rpm) see here
Remove some of the metal blocking the PSU fan

The noise is now on par with the original Xbox. I plan to replace the PSU fan with a silent 40mm fan from FrozenCPU to further reduce the noise.

I also removed the casing over the PSU and organized the wires for better air flow. I taped over some of the rear holes so the air would enter from the front and travel across the motherboard.

Temps	CPU 1	CPU 2	Northbridge
Idle	32 C	33 C	48 C
Load	58 C	60 C	55 C

The Rear

The motherboard IO panel fit perfectly between the top and bottom of the case.

The Front

I lightly sanded the sharp edges of the black plexi-glass. I did not have any extra fine sandpaper so I used a buffing pad to get a smooth matte match with the case.

The keyboard is a Logitech diNovo Mini and compliments the case really well. The Zotac ITX motherboard allows you to enter the BIOS using the Delete key. So even though the keyboard doesn't have function keys, it will still work in the BIOS.

Here it is in it's final resting place on the fireplace mantel. You can see the Wii on the right for comparison.

I'm very happy with how the custom modded case turned out. The motherboard, PSU, fans, buttons, and black plexiglass all came together much better than I expected. It is a cool, quiet, and beautiful computer. Most of all, it plays every file format and can run video from any website perfectly.

I recently installed Boxee and I've been watching some 1080p files and listening to Pandora all within the same interface. Boxee is definitely the future of the HTPC.

Posted by JarrettV on June 27 at 10:03 PM

Comments (1)

Tiny HTPC Movie and Hulu Box Part 4 Assembly

I created the front from a scrap piece of black plexi-glass found at a local glass supplier: Eastern Shore Glass. They cut it for me by scoring and snapping it. They were extremely nice and helpful. I got two pre-cut pieces and some scrap all for $8.

I drilled holes in the plexiglass for the buttons and LEDs.

Drilling a hole in plexiglass greater than 1/4" is tricky. I needed to start with a smaller bit and keep increasing the size to keep shards from breaking off.

On the back side of the black plexiglass I created a frame from aluminum that I could use to mount it to the case. I used brass screws to match the case feet.

Working with aluminum is fun as it is a fairly soft metal that is easy to drill and cut.

The buttons are held in place with wood and hot glue. The LEDs are simply hot glued in place.

I bolted the plexiglass aluminum frame to the case. On the bottom of the case, I drilled and cut holes for air intake. The cool air enters from below and travels across the motherboard to exit out the rear via fans. There are no vents on the top or sides.

I mounted the power supply in the case using a single bolt which keeps it from sliding backward when plugging in. I used wood spacers covered with a thin layer of foam to allow the PSU to be sandwiched between the top and bottom of the case. A small bracket made from aluminum provides enough friction to keep the PSU firmly in place.

Update: I've since removed the power supply circuit board from the casing and created a new solid backplate so I could reduce the number of fans needed in the case. I also added additional holes below the PSU circuit board to bring in cool air.

I mounted the motherboard by drilling four holes and using small bolts. The rubber feet act as standoffs to raise the motherboard up to the desired height. It also allows air to easily travel below and around the board.

In the next part, I'll mount the fans, round the edges of the plexiglass and show the final photos of it in action.

Posted by JarrettV on June 23 at 12:13 AM

Comments (3)

Tiny HTPC Movie and Hulu Box Part 3 Hardware Test

The parts arrived from Newegg and I put it together. The Intel fan that came with the CPU was not very tall. The fan may have fit the short height of the case, but it would have been tight. I'm glad I ordered the other fan.

Here is a picture of it after I turned it on.

I rescued some buttons, LEDs, and speaker off of an old case.

I fired it up, loaded Windows 7 RC1 and the new Hulu Desktop app.

Unfortunately, watching fullscreen Hulu is choppy. I've played many different video formats (MKV, Bluray, DivX) and they all play smooth regardless of resolution (720p, 1080p, etc). This is definitely a bug in the Hulu desktop app as even CBS, Youtube, and Vimeo HD videos playback fine. I plan to try some various changes to resolve the Hulu video stuttering.

Update: Hulu is only choppy within the desktop application. It is smooth when played through the browser.

Update2: Found a thread in their forum: Lag in fullscreen mode

It is also mentioned in many other threads so this seems to be a common problem. Let's hope they fix it soon.

In the next part, I'll mount the parts into their tiny new home (see part 1) and fabricate a front-panel.

Posted by JarrettV on June 14 at 1:02 AM

Comments (5)

Tiny HTPC Movie and Hulu Box Part 2 The Parts

I ordered the parts today from Newegg.

The video is built into the motherboard and I plan to reuse a hard drive I already have. I'm hoping to get away with just using a Media Center remote control or a smaller bluetooth keyboard once things are setup. Also, I will leave open the option of adding a full-size DVD/Bluray drive in the future.

These parts are powerful enough to do everything I need.

In the next part, I'll assemble the parts and load the OS to test out the components.

Posted by JarrettV on June 09 at 9:00 PM

Comments (0)

Tiny HTPC Movie and Hulu Box Part 1 The Case

Introduction

I'm planning to build a tiny computer for watching Hulu and HD encoded movies. The computer needs to be:

Shallow enough to easily fit on the fireplace mantel next to the TV
Powerful enough to play 1080p video's and HD online videos
Pretty enough to make the wife happy
HDMI, Bluetooth and internal PSU to minimize cable and power bricks

The Case

The case is from an old Dolby Digital decoder box from before that technology was built-in to receivers. It is dusty and needs to be cleaned.

Dimensions

16.6"W x 2.25" H x 8.25" D

The inside has plenty of room for a Mini ITX motherboard and there is probably enough room for a Slim Bluray drive and a Hard drive. I'll likely custom fabricate the front out of plexi-glass and reuse some of the old buttons.

In the next post, I'll look at the hardware I will fit in this tiny case. I'm currently looking at either the Intel platform with a Zotac GF9300 motherboard or the AMD platform with the Jetway 780G motherboard.

Update

Here is a picture of it cleaned up:

denon_avd2000_1

It would be nice if I could reuse the old face including the LCD screen and the LEDs and knob but I lack the time to explore how to communicate with those electronics.

Posted by JarrettV on June 01 at 1:53 PM

Comments (2)

Windows Live Family Safety Breaks Internet

The current version of Windows Live Family Safety may hose up your Vista machine. I recently installed this on a brand new Vista machine as I was installing Live Photo Gallery and it broke internet access and video streaming to the Xbox (via the Vista Media Center Extender)

If you try to uninstall Windows Live Family Safety, it will not fix anything. At one point, I saw the following error:

the Family Safety service has been disabled. Please ask the administrator for this computer to enable it. Until that's done, you will not be able to browse the Internet

I was logged in as an admin and I tried to disable the service, but since I uninstalled it, there was nothing to disable. Something was left behind by this program that was blocking port 80. I disabled the firewall and it still wouldn’t work.

Please note that I never signed the program into Live or enabled it before I uninstalled it. I don't know why it would start blocking the internet without asking me. My advice: Avoid installing Windows Live Family Safety

The only way I could fix this was re-installing Vista. I'm posting this in hope's that others will avoid this program.

jvance.com

.net, c#, asp.net, linq, htpc, woodworking