Adventures in Computing

Our TV died a few months ago, so we have been working on the transition to a media computer in the living room. We want to get rid of all the stereo, vcr, dvd, and big ass speaker business. We decided to use my old Hot Rod computer, but it needs some additional mods.

First of all, it sounds like a jet engine, which simple will not do for living room entertainment, so I bought a silent heatsink (that's the fan and radiator coil thing on the processor) and a new energy efficient and quiet power supply.

Here's the old set up with custom power graphic and two-tone paint job, complete with chrome wire sleeves.

The new heatsink was too big to fit on my motherboard, so I had to cut some of the extruding peices off.

Here's the exposed processor with power supply and heatsink gone.

And it would have been to easy to be able to just snap the new heatsink in. I had to actually disassemble the entire computer, pci cards and everything, as the new heatsink required mounting brackets that had to be installed from behind.

And here it is with the new parts squeezed in. When I turned it back on it was a little quieter, but not a huge difference. :(

I need a quiter vid card and then it should be ship shape...

I tried to add a wireless card, but my computer wouldn't take it (kept freezing), so I sent that card back and went and got another brand and same damn thing! So after multiple reformats and hours or troubleshooting, I just decided to run a CAT5 cable under the house and go hard wired. It was fun to work with a new type of cable - very easy to splice.

Here's the finished product in the living room. I feel so high-tech having CAT5 plates in my walls now!

And the final addition was a TV tuner card that also picks up FM radio. It was only $40 and it comes w/ a remote and it works great. You can even record live TV, like Tivo I guess. Now we need to get an antenna on top of the house. Did you know you can pick up over the air HD with rabbit ears?