dave87's Home Media & Digital Lifestyle - WIP!

[dave87]

Close, Thinkpad W500


Yup, finally upgraded the main desktop to W7 Pro, all the main machines in the house now run some varient of Win 7 (Home Premium or Pro, depending on the machine). The SSD has made the biggest difference tbh!

[Pancake]

Ooohhh sexy, got the 1680 x 1050 or the 1920 x 1200 screen?

And yeah the SSD in my laptop has done wonders, and better battery life (I take out the ultrabay HDD when on battery)

[dave87]

1920*1200


The SSD is in my desktop PC, not my Thinkpad - but after installing on in the desktop I'll definitely be adding one to the Thinkpad in time. Where did you get your Ultrabay from?

[Pancake]

1920*1200


The SSD is in my desktop PC, not my Thinkpad - but after installing on in the desktop I'll definitely be adding one to the Thinkpad in time. Where did you get your Ultrabay from?

eBay, was about £12. Not a genuine one but it does the exact same job.

Since I never use the DVD-RW I decided to get one, I also got a blanking plate for when I'm not using it and i want more battery life. The extra hard drive took about 30 mins off my 9 hour run time, so not the end of the world.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6017469/Rand...2/IMAG0080.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6017469/Rand...2/IMAG0081.jpg

[spac3d]

Nice dave, doesnt look like there isn't much your house cant handle now

When's the clapper being installed ?

[dave87]

Nice dave, doesnt look like there isn't much your house cant handle now

When's the clapper being installed ?

Now there's an idea......



I had actually planned IR controlled dimmers for the lights, but hadn't decided which ones when the electrical work was done - so I currently have normal light switches. It is on the 'to-do' list

[dave87]

Really should remember to keep this thread up to date!

My main PC decided to break its RAID0 Volume after a powercut, and whilst I was rebuilding it got fed up with the non-modular power supply. So I ordered a new OCZ 650w Modular item, fitted it and whilst it fitted, it obscured the SATA ports on my S775 motherboard. Ah. That's not going to work.

The solution? An upgrade to a new i5 setup....obviously

New build:

Hasn't changed much from the outside:



The important bits have, however:

The OCZ PSU also posed another issue - the plug didn't fit. The Lian Li case I've got (PC-A05) has the PSU at the front of the machine. This is all well and good, except you wouldn't want the power lead plugged in at the front. Lian Li's solution is a power socket at the back, which connects to a power lead that runs inside of the case. This is fine when the plug on the end of said lead fits your PSU. It didn't.

So a new one had to be made:

...and the new lead I had to make:



The attentive amongst you will notice that end is a molded plug, and I can't possibly have made it. Yes, you are right - I didn't make that end! I used a right angled lead I already had, cut the mains plug end off and soldered the required connection on the other end



vs the other one which didn't fit.

[dave87]

And today's issue. Remember this?




Now compare with this:



Time & weight have done their thing, and the shelf is now as straight as Alan Carr. Point proven:




vs





As soon as I've charged the batteries on the cordless drill, I'll see if the extra support I've got in mind corrects the issue.

[dave87]

...and for all those that were holding their breath () it works:




At least now I don't have to worry about the Homeserver and the central part of the network crashing (to the floor) at 3am...


Now how heavy are UPSes and dare I risk it?

[spoon_]

UPSes are bloody heavy... Been fitting some in racks yesterday and almost done my back!

[dave87]

I'm guessing the floor would be the best place for one then - I don't think adding much more weight to that rack is a good idea....


On another note, Infinity 80/20 arrives tomorrow. Woop! As to the funky green water emanating from the BT manhole cover on the route my phoneline likely takes to the cabinet - that can't be doing good things for speeds....

[Biscuit]

Dont see why it should matter, if the shield is intact and the wires not damaged it shouldnt make any difference

[phill8800GT]

Wow!!

After going through some 5 pages of pictures and masses of writing I'm in complete amazment!!

Dave your a man after my own heart!!

How many of those ports are you using??

When I bought my house, I networked the damn thing as I refused to use wireless and decided from the get go, that I wanted a decent setup, but although being very basic in compairson, I'm very happy with it!! Having 1Gb throughout the house is very good to have when your streaming video's or anything!!

Do you have a spec list of everything that you have in the house??

[dave87]

The switches are massively overkill, however I played the waiting game on eBay, so they were a (relative) bargain. The top switch is a 24 Port Linksys Layer 2 Managed GbE PoE switch (24x10/100/1000 ports, 2x MiniGBIC ports) and the bottom a 50 port 3com Layer 2 Managed 10/100 switch with 2 GbE uplink ports. Currently not using that many of the ports!

The idea (eventually) is as we redecorate we wire each room with as much CAT5E as we see ourselves using, connect the ports for quick stuff (desktops, servers etc) to the GbE switch (top one) and PoE stuff to the same switch, then every other socket is connected to the 100mb switch (the bottom one) so they are all connected, but saves me having to pick up another expensive GbE managed switch.


Haven't compiled a spec list - I did have a spreadsheet with what everything had cost, but that started to get slightly scary

[phill8800GT]

I'm lucky with my setup as I've just placed 16 gigabit network connections throughout the house before I moved in and I have managed to get everything I need connected, connected!! I would have liked to have 24 ports, but there wasn't any need as each bedroom and the front living room have at least two connections in each and the PC room has 8!!

I'm very happy with it and even more so now with the fibre connection I for my internet It might only be 38Mb but I didn't see the point in getting anything faster since I won't be here hardly from the end of August!!

I gave up worrying about the cost of it all simply because when I looked into it, I worked out that just my two i7 rigs and my 4 (now 3) 30" panels cost me more in one year than my mortgage did so at that points, I stopped worrying but I'm glad I did it simply because now I have it the wife to be can't moan and say I've had to spend more money!!

[escapizm]

dave87 et al

I joined having found your excellent thread, I’m about to embark on a full house media/network install. A friend is refurbishing a house and asked I deal with this scope as I once wired some speakers in my house!!!!!.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I’ve asked my friend to tell me what will be going where (phone, TV, PC, intelligent lighting, etc etc) as a starting point, I had read CAT5e will suffice to get HDMI (2 cables in ballun) around so we'll use that for data and probably standard CAT5 for the intelligent lighting. What I’m not sure of is what goes in NODE 1, does the SKY HD box go here with the Blu-ray player as this will be housed in a ventilated cupboard under the stairs.

Any drawing or schematics of what should be considered. I’ll start a new thread of my efforts once I get up to speed, we need to start thinking of cable run soon as the plastered comes in a few weeks!. Thanks