AlanP's HTPC Mythbox

A

alan.p

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 30, 2006
Messages
409
Yes, I finally got around to taking some pictures.

If you should happen to walk into my lounge, you'll probably notice a somewhat out of place boxy looking object...



... inside which lurks all kinds of stuff.



One day, either when I have too much money or get really tired of looking at beige, I'll buy a full ATX Silverstone HTPC case. Until then, the no-name stays. The tuner cards are relatively close together...



... with room for some more cards, should the need arise.

Sitting back on the La-Z-Boy, watching my 29" with the Pioneer stereo, I can control the MythBox with...



... that stuff. More likely the remote, since the range of the keyboard is about ten centimeters, and the mouse is a wired job for X-Windows emergencies.

If you're really brave, and look around the back...



... you'll see a mean, ugly looking tangle of cables that are, from top to bottom: keyb, mouse, IR sensor for remote, adaptor for sound (onboard mobo), composite out (Gigabyte FX5200, go figure), coax aerial in, and two satellite cables below that to finish it off.

It works very, very well. Music, video, TV, the lot.

Any questions?
 
Occassionally Optus B1's TVNZ feed screws up and my DVB cards don't know what to do, but that's about the only problem.

As for the ugliness, it pretty much just looks like a beige box from the front. Normally there is some kind of cloth over the top of it to hide it when it is turned sideways (parallel to the wall.)

Well... the other problem is that I really need to put another fan in it, because the three tuner cards run surprisingly hot.
 
Yeah, me too. I actually had two of those, but I dumped one. Does anyone know what it's called? I'm kind of curious...
 
The tuner cards have been running decidedly hot, and I've had a couple Zalman fans lying around for a while, and I finally got around to putting a blowhole above the three tuner cards.



I cut the hole itself with a pair of tinsnips (the holesaw for a 120mm fan would have cost me $60 -- not worth it for two or three holes!). The Zalman silicon pins for holding the fan work surprisingly well with the fan not moving at all, and not vibrating the side panel like hell. This is what they look like installed, with the cards they're cooling right above it --





with another shot of the fan by itself for curious people. As you can see from the first image in this post, the pins really do look quite a lot better than the bolts I would have used otherwise.

For a final taste of the future, here's my next thing to fix. They're running way too hot. Waaaay too hot. The problem is finding a NZ source for a HDD cooler that doesn't apply pressure to delicate HDDs and doesn't cost stupid amounts of money.

 
alan.p said:
...
For a final taste of the future, here's my next thing to fix. They're running way too hot. Waaaay too hot. The problem is finding a NZ source for a HDD cooler that doesn't apply pressure to delicate HDDs and doesn't cost stupid amounts of money.

Click to expand...

It looks like you have at least one mounting point higher up in the case. The drives would be much better at dissapating heat with a little more space around them. Maybe use some drive rails to move the hard drives up into the open space of the 5.25" bays?

BTW... what version of myth are you running? I was rather pleased when I finally got around to upgrading to .20. What flavor of linux do you have installed? You mention satellite, is it dvb-s? Which birds are you getting signals from?

-q
 
qfour20 said:
It looks like you have at least one mounting point higher up in the case. The drives would be much better at dissapating heat with a little more space around them. Maybe use some drive rails to move the hard drives up into the open space of the 5.25" bays?
Click to expand...

I could do that. I could also move 'em into the 5.25" bays with some adaptors -- honestly hadn't thought of that! I'll have to order some. Three HDDs, three 5.25" bays... thanks, man!

qfour20 said:
BTW... what version of myth are you running? I was rather pleased when I finally got around to upgrading to .20. What flavor of linux do you have installed? You mention satellite, is it dvb-s? Which birds are you getting signals from?
Click to expand...

I'm running KnoppMyth R5E50, which is a Linux distro specifically geared for Myth and built around Debian and Knoppix. R5E50 is .20-fixes based, and a great deal more stable than .19-fixes. KM "just works", rather than the farting around a custom install will require for dependencies.

I'm using DVB-S, yes, on Optus B1 and Optus D1 (once TVNZ and Sky have finished transitioning -- D1 is replacing B1, position and all.) As for capture cards, I'm using two Technisat Skystar 2 cards, running from a splitter that also supplies the Sky set top box.

I also grab my EPG information from the Optus birds.
 
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