right on bro!

Montez asked for a photo of the setup:

The case is an Apex SQ-328 that I got from PC Club because it was the cheapest thing available and I wanted a case immediately. The included Allied power supply is kinda quiet, but not really. The case itself is not very quiet, but it’s a nice case for the money, and Apex gets points because I called them when I couldn’t figure out how to pop the front bezel off, and somebody at Apex walked me through it.

Case will be replaced with an HTPC case as soon Antec puts out the new NSK2400 or Fusion, and it’ll go into the rack under the TV. (Side rant: Can’t somebody make an HTPC case that fits a microATX board, has a quiet PSU, fits normal height PCI cards, and is less than 6″ tall?)

The wireless keyboard/joystick is an ione Scorpius that I got from Newegg and it works quite nicely with Linux.

The computer is hooked up between the cable box and the TV. Channel changing is done via a serial cable hooked up between the computer and the cable box.

Rest of the specs:

• Athlon XP 2200+ (Thoroughbred core) with Nexus AXP-3200 heatsink
• MSI K7N2GM2-LSR nForce 2 microATX motherboard
• 512MB of Kingston DDR RAM
• Generic cheapo NVIDIA GeForce MX440 64MB fanless AGP video card (output to TV via S-Video)
• Seagate 7200.8 300GB ATA/100 hard disk
• Hauppauge PVR-250 tuner/capture card
• NEC DVD burner (forget what model)

I already had some of this stuff so all I had to do was buy the motherboard, case, memory, keyboard, video card, and serial cable. I think the total expenditure was a little over $240.

Yes, I am a nerd.

Home Theater PCs, DVRs, and Media