Finally

Finally, it is done!  I have made FLAC work on Media Centre!  I have always been able to get FLAC to work on my desktop, but for some reason I always had a hard time getting everything to work on the HTPC.

If you are not familiar with this format, check it out.  It is a lossless format that is completely open source and relatively small in size.  It works great with WINAMP and VLC, and is worth converting to, or switching to.

Here are the useful links:

The Tutorial:  FLAC Music playback in Windows Media Center 

The CODEC: Directshow Filters

The PlugIn:  WMP Tag Plus 

HTPC Upgrade

This was the easiest upgrade ever!  I switched out the LGA775 processor with another more powerful processor (Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0 Ghz)  Things are working quite well.  It was a simple swap and CMOS wipe followed by some Windows Updates.  No new system and no hiccups.  The most annoying thing was that I had to use my HDMI projector to configure the BIOS as my normal mini touch screen is USB based so will not work until its drivers are loaded- after the BIOS. 

NEXT:  Get FLAC working on that machine.  It has been an ongoing nightmare to get working.

New Build Continued

The board has flashed up and is running well.  The only casualty has been the CPU heatsink fan.  Luckily I had an old Sythe Ninja heatsink with a dead fan.  I've jury-rigged that beast with an old case fan and it is now working well within normal parameters.  All is good.

A picture will be forthcoming when the last 4 GB of RAM arrives in the mail tomorrow.    It looks pretty rad. 

The Build: The Main Desktop

So, i am struggling to put together the following build:

• CPU:  AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 6 Core Processor 2.8GH
• Mother Board:  MSO 890FXA GD70
• RAM: 8GB DDR3 
• GPU:  Gigabyte ATI 5830 

The first attept to power-up the build resulted in sparks, smoke and general badness.  After closer inspection I (and the folks at the local shop) think the board was DOA.  I suspect it could also have been the tolerances in the case - creating a short.

I have since purchased a new case and installed all of the components will take the beast to the shop tomorrow and power it up after an inspection from the local expert.  I have built enough computers to know that I am doing things right, but the added insurance from an expert is reassuring and a mistake is, in this case, costly.


The nice thing about the build has been the new case.  The hard drive cage is 90 degrees to the old standard and is a completely tool-less install.  Cable management is a relatively simple affair as well.  The large size of the graphics card, is so far the greatest challenge.

C

Back at it:

Started a new build Saturday.   Motherboard blew when power was applied for the first time.  Not good.  More to follow.

C

Nuance PDF Reader - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

An alternative to that bloated, ubiquitous and always calling home PDF viewer:

Free PDF Reader | nuance.com
Nuance PDF Reader - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

So far so good.

Add-In Update: Disk Management 1.1 for Windows Home Server | We Got Served - Windows Home Server & Your Digital Home

Absolutlely one of the best add-ins for WHS.

Add-In Update: Disk Management 1.1 for Windows Home Server | We Got Served - Windows Home Server & Your Digital Home

I'm off to download and install right now.

New Hard Drive

The home server is running out of space in terms of memory, drive capacity and internal real estate. 

On the board I am running  off with 2 SATA ports and 2 IDE controllers.

Memory-wise I have 2.7 TB of space across 6 hard drives (2 SATA and 4 IDE)

In the box I am close to maxed out with four out of five 3.5 inch bays and two converted 5.25 inch bays.

My current project is to fix this.  I have just installed a 4 port PCI SATA card, a Thermaltake hot swappable drive bay and a 1.5 TB SATA hard drive.   In order to do this I removed one of the old 250 GB IDE hard drives and moved some others around.  I had room to keep all of the hard drives, but I wanted to be able to leave the hot-swap bay open.  By leaving it open someone can easily add another hard drive in my absence and I can do the rest of the work remotely.  Besides, with an extra 1.25 TB (1.5 TB - 250 GB) I should have more than enough space.

Things progressed well yesterday.  Removing the old HD from WHS went easily though it was time consuming; it also left all other HDs critically full. The physical install went fairly well.  The box is getting very full so it was hard to get my fingers into some places.  The problems started when it came time to get the SATA card's drivers installed.  For some reason WHS is having a hard time connecting to the internet for web-browsing (it seems to connect for remote access - most of the time) so it was difficult to automatically install any drivers.  I have also removed all optical drives.  So it was a matter of going to a couple of different sites to put drivers on a USB stick and then install them manually.  It worked - eventually.


At the end of the process I am left with a pile of of red drives and one massive empty drive.  So, now I am engaged in a strange process of removing hard drives from the storage pool starting with the smallest and then re-adding them.  This has the effect of forcing the system to re-balance the storage more appropriately across all of te drives.  Unfortunately it is time consuming and the server is basically down while it happens.

CMM

The Home Server Seduction

Using old computer components about two years ago I was able to cobble together a box with enough power to run a small home server. I have since been seduced into getting it fully operational.  Now that it is fully online and operational I have started this blog (which hopefully will one day be hosted on the server). Getting to this point has been an adventure and was probably blog worthy, but now that I am a little more savvy this small blog may be a little more useful and interesting.

So what seduced me?  The thought of central storage, backups and remote access to my files anywhere in the world.  About three weeks ago I finally achieved all of the above. 

Hope you enjoy the blog.

CMM