Ltooz
Building, Fixing and Improving Stuff...
MULTIMEDIA PC SERVER
Motherboard + CPU at Fry's $49.99 + CPU cooler $14.99 + 2GB Dual 6400 DDR2 Crucial for $19.99 after rebate + Samsung 750GB SATA $109 + SATA DVD burner $24.99 = $219.00 total.
**** After installing the windows and drivers for this board, I found out that NERO can't burn anything through this SATA DVD burner because there's no way to turn the DMA on. This board driver uses the bios to access it like an SATA hard drive and there's no mode ATA. I had to remove this SATA DVD and use an ATA DVD burner. This SATA DVD works in GIGABYTE intel board. So DO NOT BUY SATA DVD burner to use with this motherboard if you plan to use NERO. The Samsung Hard drive is slow to spin up and I think it's a mistake to get this one, never had problems with Western Digital's or Seagate's.*********************
I will install all the components, setup the wireless network and add the HDTV Wonder tuner from ATI to record HDTV shows.
Components:
The CPU cooler should have thermal grease on the surface, if not, we have to get some and put some there where the surface meets the CPU case.
Notice the version of the motherboard so later we can get all the updates: bios, drivers... etc.
Install the mounting nuts for the motherboard tooling holes, make sure no nuts will hit the back of the board and there may be some holes that can't be mounted.
Install the CPU on motherboard before putting into the case, same with DDR2 memory sticks & CPU cooler. Make sure the triangle corner is in the socket correctly for the CPU. Don't force if it doesn't fall in easily. If you get the OEM CPU like I did, make sure you inspect the pins, no crooked or bent pins due to mis-handling from Fry's or manufacturer. All rows of pins must be straight.The CPU cooler lock should be at the outside of the board. Locate the CPU fan power connector and hook it up.
Install memory stick firmly and make sure the KEY pin is in the correct position and the tabs are locked in.
Every motherboard has its own backplate, so install the backplate into the case before anything else.
Make sure the backplate snaps in fully, then we can place the motherboard in the case, align all the tooling holes and nuts, especially the backplate for all the connectors go through completely.
There are many little taps in the backplate, make sure they bent inside instead of outside like this.
Align all tooling holes and putting the screws to tighten them down. Tighten them down slowly and evenly, middle, corners and make sure the board is centered. When this is done, plug in all the power cables from the power supply box, there should be 2 cables, main board power (long connector) and a 12v power cable (4pins). In this case with this CPU cooler, I had to move the cooler a little bit to connect the 12V connector and then put the clip back in place.
Now the board is securely in place with all the screws tightened down. It's time to plug in the front panel switches, USB, Audio and LEDS connectors.
When this is done, then we can install the DVD burner into the case and cable it up. Since this one is SATA, the power cable and data is different from IDE 40 pins.
Now we can plug in the cable & power for the Hard drive which is the same set up. I like to leave the OEM hard drive outside, tested before I install it in the case. Connect the mouse, key board and ready to fire up the computer. Make sure the power, reset switches are connected correctly from the case to the motherboard. Push the power button and "pray" that the bios will boot up and we can go to bios and set to FIRST boot from CDROM and place the XP windows into the CDROM and we should see this.
Turn on the power and hit "delete" key then the bios screen will come up
Click choose Advanced Bios Features to select 1st boot device and select CDROM since windowXp only setup from CD.
We can hit F10 key to save and exit or if we want to overclock this board, we can go to Advance Chipset Features to play around with the frequency. We can over clock this board to 215MHZ x 11=2365MHZ from 200x11=2200MHZ. In order to make this stable, we have to set the htspeed to 4x instead of 5 or auto.
After everything is done, hit F10 key to save and exit. The bios will boot from the CDROM, so make sure the windowXP disk is in the CD. Just follow the instruction to load the windows operating system.
Make sure the hard drive is Quick format with NTFS not FAT32 and finish installing windows. If we use an old hard drive that already had windows install and do not wish to format the whole drive to preserve some old data, we can choose to only delete the windows folder and install new windows into it. DO NOT NEED TO FORMAT THE WHOLE DRIVE.
Optimizing the windowsXP.
When the windowXP is finished, I like to set up the Security & change some features to make the windows closes faster.
To set up Security, turn on the DEP by right click "my computer" --> select properties ---> advanced
Choose "performance settings" and select DEP tap, select DEP(Data Execution Prevention). This one will prevent any program from executing like spyware or virus from the internet. The only thing is that everytime you install new software, you may have to add the program in the list. To me prevention is always better and fixing when it already happened.
When windows shutdowns, it may take a long time to close all the programs, I edit some part of the registry to make it shutdown faster. Click Start-->run and type in "regedit"
HKEY_CURREN_USER -->CONTROL PANEL--->DESKTOP and change AutoEndTasks from 0 to 1
Scroll down, select WaitToKillApp from 20000 to 4000, this will accelerate the kill application quicker. Save the registry and get out.
When we install programs and many of them are in the systemtray and auto loading their programs which many times cause slowdown in booting up and system running. Use msconfig to get rid of all these start up programs. Start->run->msconfig and choose the startup tap, you will see all the program executing themselves when booting up the windows. I take them all out. This will make your computer boot up faster and less icons on the system tray.
WIRELESS NETWORKING:
It doesn't matter which brand of wireless router you use, the setup should be the same. This is how I configured mine without lots of security in mind. My wireless routers & wireless cards are from Airlink101Nrouter & Npci-adapters which do the job well.
Setting up the N-wireless router is simple, just follow the instructions. After connecting the network cable to the wireless router, open a browser and type 192.168.1.1 and the screen should come up with admin login page.
Wireless setup, choose the SSID and select SSID Broadcast to "Disable" so normal people can't see your network.
I setup the mac address for my other computers only.
To configure all other wireless adapters to talk to this router, we need to add a profile for each adapter, name of the SSID & type of security, in this case, WPA/PSK, TKIP, and the passphrase.
The Router should be ready by now. If we use windowsXP for all our computers, we need to setup the local network. Each computer should have an wireless adapter card to talk to the server and others in the network. We need to create a network name for all computers to see.
**** Right click on my computer-->select property--->ComputerName--->fill in computer name & Workgroup by click on Network ID and follow the instruction. All computers should have the same workgroup name to share files with each others.
After all computers are configured the same, then we can see if the computers are in the network by looking at my network places.
When we see other computers in the house, then the network is done. If we want to share files from each computer, just right click the folder that we want to share and select sharing priveleges.
ATI HDTVWONDER TUNER
I got this board in 2006, it's a very good tuner although the software have some kinks in it, but when you get it working, it's a very great piece of device.
It's a PCI based, just install it in one of an empty PCI slot. The trick is installing driver BEFORE installing the card. Download all the updated software from the website. For some reasons, the mmc 9.61 is the best for this device, so don't install the 9.15. Watchhdtv192 is great but if the 9.61 is working, it's better.
1ST, installed the original software that comes with the card (CD), then install the updated software & the card inside the system, when everything came out fine, you should check the drivers to make sure there's no exclamation mark on any of them.
After initialization, autochannels and everything, you will see the screen like this. Make sure the antenna is connected to the correct, NOT CAT input
I use a power splitter for the antenna, output to TV & HDTVWonder.
To setup DVR, if you want to record in HDTV 1920x1080 then use this format, do not use native since it won't record.
To Record on the fly, just click record and set the length of the time.
After finished recording, the files will be in my documents
If you're not home and you want to schedule a recording session
When finished, just close the application, when the time comes, MMC9.61 will automatically turn on the hdtv recording. You should test it to make sure everything works with your computer. Make sure you delete all the jobs before starting the new schedule.
Now all the movie files will be in MPEG2 with resolutions @1920x1080, it will be crytal clear, but you can't burn it into a dvd because the dvd format is only 720x480. I have software pinnacle studio9 which only does 720x480. I need to upgrade to HDmovie maker. I downloaded the trial version of ULEAD 11 plus which I can use to edit out all the commercials of the olympics and output it to the same resolution and they come out beautifully. When the Blueray dvd burner & blank blueray dvd prices drop, then I can get the software and make it into HDDVD. For now, just store the files in the computer and play in HD. When you watch HDTV, you can't go back.... it's true.
Cheers,
8/15/08
