Dave’s Occasional Brainfart

HTPC

There are too many choices for a HTPC.

I already have RAM & SATA HDD so they are not included. Will probably get an SSD for the box at a later date.

Have narrowed it down to the following

Shiny Case

Remote - Logitech Harmony 785 Advanced Universal Remote

http://www.logitech.com/en-nz/remotes/universal_remotes/devices/370 U

Keyboard - Logitech diNovo Cordless Mini Keyboard

http://www.logitech.com/en-au/keyboards/keyboard/devices/3848 U

Case - Silverstone ML02B-MXR Slim MoDT Case

http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/p_spec.php?pno=ml02&area=usa U

Motherboard - Zotac IONITX-F-E ION N330 Dual Core PCIE

http://www.zotacusa.com/zotac-ionitx-f-e-atom-n330-1-6ghz-dual-core-mini-itx-intel-motherboard.html U

Optical Drive – SONY AD7590S SATA Internal Slim DVD Burner(OEM) U

Tuner - Leadtek PCI-E PxDVR3200H Hybrid TV Tuner HDTV/AC3

http://www.leadtek.com/eng/tv_tuner/overview.asp?lineid=6&pronameid=377 U

Total Price – $1013

Cheaper Alternative

Replace the Case/Motherboard/ODD & Tuner with a

Case - ASRock ION330 NV ION GBL DVDRW HDMI BK

http://www.asrock.com/nettop/spec/ion%20330.asp U

Tuner - KWorld TV Tuner DVB-T HDTV USB U

Brings the price down to $628.00

New PC

I got a new pc. YAY

Need a new pooter

My laptop has decided it wants to kill itself. In addition to having heating issues and freezing all the time, last night it started making lovely ticking noises while reading sections of the hard drive.

So I’ve priced up the following desktop to replace it

Motherboard – Asus P6T Deluxe

CPU – i7 920

CPU Cooler – Noctua U12P

RAM – 3x 1Gig DDR3 Corsair

HDD – 4 x 500G WD

PSU – CoolerMaster 600W

Video – MSI GF9800GTX+

$2039

Additionally, as I need to visit clients I’m tossing on an EEE S101 because it looks sexy. I’ve found that for $877.

Total Price $2916

Billion 7404VGP Optimisation

I have myself aBillion 7404VGP dsl2+ modem. I find it quite nice and full featured. Also, I’ve never had an isssue with a Billion after using them for about 8 years.

I recently decided to optimise the settings on the modem to improve call quality on the inbuilt SIP client and for various other needs. In searching for a solution to the problem I stumbled across a word doc by an unknown author. I found it quite good at explaining how things can work and since doing what was suggested in it I have had no problems with calls.

I’ve included the word doc with this post and if anyone knows who wrote it i’ll happily attribute them.

Billion QoS optimisation

MX-760HD #2

I got NDAS working on my new toy last night using the winpcap method of scanning for the device keys rather than waiting for the email to show up telling me what they were. This morning I got the official keys by email. *shrug*

Anyway, NDAS on the MX760HD is horrible. It’s very very slow. I don’t know why it’s slow (if it’s a network issue with the device itself not getting full speed or if it’s NDAS). But everyone is reporting slow transfer speeds.

As they’ve already got the ability to read remote network shares why didn’t they just enable writing via them as well? a simple samba share or some such since they’re using a custom linux OS.

Meh. It works well enough so far. So I’ll see how it behaves as I try more things.