2010 July » theHTPC.net

Optiplex 745 capacitor transplant…it’s alive!

Jul 292010

So, I was disassembling the 745 to see if I could somehow retrofit a different board in there and once the board was out, I noticed that there was a solder point at a joint that had no capacitor – eureka! I had replaced all the bad caps, but I didn’t think to see if there were any missing caps!

The problem I had now was that I threw the old GX260 board I took good caps from into the garbage over a week ago. I went into the basement and rummaged through a few old boards and came across one that went in an old Dimension 8200. I needed a capacitor for C442, which was a 6.3V 2200μF, which were plentiful on the GX260 board, but didn’t exist on this 8200. However, it did have a 16V 2200μF and that would be good enough…as long as it fit.

Long story short, transplant was a success. I just finished installing Win7 Pro x86 on there and will get it completed tomorrow to replace my son’s age old GX280. Good times.

Update:

Well, I was hoping the rear fan alert I was getting was something simple, but it’s not…I’m actually missing the rear fan. For some reason, I thought there was some sort of termination plug for that fan port, but there is not. I considered going through my box of junk for a 4-pin fan that I could maybe fit in there, but I found one on eBay for $9.99. I didn’t want to spend anything on this system, but it’s actually pretty nice and considering their capacitor issues due to heat, I’d rather not do without that fan…even if it obviously doesn’t work well. Something is better than nothing.

ImagesByName People wave one complete!

Imagesbyname 8 Responses »

Jul 282010

The last package was turned in about 4 hours ago and I’ve just finished getting everything set up for a full public release on Friday. Users of meta<browser> 2.0 will have access to them now via theHTPC.net plugin.

I can’t thank the contributors enough for the outstanding job they have done over the past, nearly, 8 months. 14,587 edited/new images were turned in – absolutely incredible!

I hope that you will all appreciate and enjoy what these guys have done. It will be a terrific compliment to any HTPC frontend that can use them.

Awesome work everyone! For those of you that have been patiently waiting, check back Friday for the link to the new People package!

As the ImagesByName Project (first wave) draws to a close…

Imagesbyname 1 Response »

Jul 272010

As of the time of this writing, there are only 400 images left in the IBN Project’s first wave repository. As those are expected to be completed before the weekend, I wanted to go ahead and leave a few short words on where the project is heading after this image pack is released:

I will be taking a break
Project package distribution will no longer exist
A new application-based distribution process will be observed (details here) for the second wave of images (currently a little over 13K)
Project membership will be reset (you will need to resubmit to become part of the project)
Contribution to the project will be anonymous (image submissions are not tracked)
I will begin taking your actor packages so that missing actors can be added to the project

It took nearly 8 months to finish these 14K+ images, but the end is finally here. All those that contributed to this project can’t be thanked enough. All I can say is that your hard work will be enjoyed amongst tens of thousands of HTPC users very soon. It’s an amazing thought.

For those of you who have been sending in project contribution requests, I’m sorry I have not replied. The reason being is that all image packages are assigned, so there is no work to do. I will be closing the project submission form shortly and it will reopen when the second wave is ready to the public for editing.

unRAID server getting a new case.

HTPC No Responses »

Jul 272010

I’ve been lobbying for this retired rackmount server at work for several months and have repeatedly been told I could have it, but the official asset release form has never been OK’d for me to walk away with it…until this morning!

There were a couple of them, but one had an old P4 HT 3.0GHz in it that is pretty much worthless as far as work goes. It’s not really useful to me either, but the board isn’t half bad – it’s an Intel D945GNT. It only supports up to the Pentium D-series of processors, which makes it a power hog, but otherwise it’s a pretty nice board. I just finished building a system using spare parts for my son, so I might actually swap this board out with it…it’s a crappy VIA chipset with S3 graphics. Plenty good enough for a 5-year old, but this one would be an improvement.

The case is quite large, but that’s OK. I actually intend to add some drives internally, when the time comes, since the external hot swap cages are expensive and draw more power. Besides, it will match! It needs a little cleaning up, both inside and out, but is in relatively very good shape. Only a few scratches on the bottom since it was never actually racked.

I will be retiring this old case. I’ve had it for around 10 years.

Update:

I’ve sort of decided what I want to do with this case when I get the time. I have a 4-in-3 hot swap cage in one of my external drive cases and I think I want to transfer that cage into the available three 5.25″ drive bays this case has. I’m using a simple 4-port SATA-to-eSATA converter to go out to that case now, but I don’t see the point if I can make it internal. One extra PSU that doesn’t have to be running all the time and it will save some space. I’ll have to swap out PSUs in the unRAID server, but not a big deal there…the 500W Fortron Blue Storm should be able to handle my minimal server build and five drives with no problem. Later on, I can just buy a port multiplier module and 5-in-3 cage when I need to expand again – it can go right in that empty case.