Some developments already in this new big one. It's been a busy week for me. Trying to get one of those real jobs people say comes after college. Add that to my current full time job and my unfathomable lust for new parts and you've got a four course meal that I'm too full to eat.
Unfortunately I seem to know no limits.
My DC-PC project is wrapping up nicely. At this very moment it is playing a movie through VGA on my shiny 24" LCD. I'm currently using a wireless keyboard to control XBMC, as my Bluetooth dongle is being used elsewhere. I already have another on order. I've sampled Wiimote control though. It was painless to set up and is a joy to use.
That's my setup. Yes I'm watching Friday, get over it :P
Spy my Wiimote lying dormant and my stainless Smartphone Coaster next to the wireless keyboard.
The internals have had a few changes in the past week as well (busy eh). I've swapped the RAM to 2x1GB sticks of DDR2-667. The size of the RAM isn't important, as this is a fairly stripped Linux distro. More important was the physical size change. The old RAM had massive heatsinks. Remember I mentioned it was tight in there? I've also removed the 2.5" hard drive that was attached to the lid. In its place is a SATA to CF adapter with a 4GB CF card. XBMC Live is installed on the CF card, and the machine has no problem booting to it. It has cooled the interior off significantly. Sadly though, I can no longer fry an egg on the northbridge heatsink. Good thing I'm full.
There's no longer a slab of hot metal above the CPU heatsink and fan, so that's always good as well. It's nearly there. Next is to come up with a way to keep the lid down. Before I was using the weight of the hard drive, but the CF assembly weighs considerably less. Also missing is a way to keep the case itself together. As long as it sits in one place there are no issues. Touch it though, and it's noticeably not secured. I'm sure some acrylic will make it's way into both of the solutions to those problems. Hopefully those will come soon, the laziness may set in. I'm afraid I'll leave it as is.
The laziness hasn't struck just yet though. This past week I've also swapped my main desktop to a smaller micro ATX case just for fun. A Cooler Master Elite 341 to be specific. I've also been playing with a Phenom II x4 SFF (small form factor) machine from a big name manufacturer just to keep my AMD needs nourished.
P.S. Speaking of AMD, anyone see those Fusion mini-ITX motherboards that were announced? Is it normal to rebuild a computer that isn't even finished yet? Sigh.
