Instead of posting random threads all over the forum I will just post the full worklog here instead...
Project Ione will be the replacement for both
Anemone and
Udat. Anemone has simply started to reach retirement age after more than three years of active service as HTPC. Udat didn't reach my performance expectations so the RAID controller and HDDs will be moved over to this project while the rest will be sold as a single unit. This means Ione will be a HTPC/Fileserver combo.
To keep the Anemone legacy this
MDVA will be a main part of the mod.
Step one of all projects, to find and hunt down suitable hardware:
Pentium D820 (dual core 2.8GHz)
Supermicro PDSGE motherboard
2 x 512 MB DDR2 PC4200
XFX GeForce 6600 128MB dual DVI + HDTV dongle
Tagan 480W modular PSU
And last but not least the canvas...
A Silverstone LC-17 HTPC case.
It was primarily selected for it's dual optical drive bays so both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray can be installed if needed next year.
This is something I have not used in a proper casemod for over four years - a fullsize ATX motherboard. This Supermicro PDSGE was the result of five hours of dedicated searching. Most motherboards were either EATX, had Xeon CPUs mounted at the very front edge or lacked a video port (AGP/PCIe).
Not too exciting rear panel, the six USB ports will come in handy as well as the gigabit ethernet port. I promise none of them will be ripped off even if I don't intend to use the onboard sound.
This is the main reason this board was selected, two 64bit PCI-X 133MHz slots to park the Broadcom BC4852 RAID controller in. Then a dedicated 32bit PCI bus for sound and TV cards. last but not least a PCI Express x16 slot for future proofing the videocards.The PCI Express x1 slot is shared with the onboard Intel gigabit ethernet controller. As discussed
here this motherboard will not become the bottleneck in this system anytime soon, which unfortunately can't be said about the Epia M10000 currently in Udat...
This is how my home cinema looks as of today, the central piece is a Panasonic 32" SDTV that was the high end back in 2000. To the left you can see Anemone standing on top of Tranquillity which has starting to grow some vegetation...
When the worklog is completed I will post a pic again and there should be a fairly different look by then.
To the left of the sofa we have my precious, the slowly but steady growing DVD collection... Another seven or eight films and another bookcase is needed.