One of my favorite places to find bargains in electronics is The Source Warehouse in Barrie Ontario. It’s about a half hour from home here so I usually take a drive up to the store usually once a month. The warehouse is comprised of a regular retail store and a stock clearance center for the electronics retail chain that used to be Radio Shack. How good are the bargains? Well, I’ve picked up 50 packs of cds for 8 bucks, an inverter for use in a car for 4 bucks. Debbie found a 1 gig mp3 player for a buck. Granted you have to search around in the boxes of stock to find these gems, it’s worth it. A couple months back I even found a brand new internal dvd burner for computer for 3 bucks! If you are interested here is the address, think of it as an electronic garage sale.

277 Bayview drive in Barrie Ontario

Deb and I are lucky to have a wilderness park only a couple of minutes away from the house. We took a walk today with our dog at Scanlon Creek Park. Most of the leaves have fallen and the squirrels can be seen racing from tree to tree. Molly our dog is all tuckered out now.

Well we’re back to give the android phones anther chance to redeem themselves. Debbie and I both purchased a Samsung Galaxy from Best Buy. It’s an early Christmas present to each of us. We’ve installed the APNdroid app to control the 3g feature which might remedy the system hangs the phone has experienced with some folks. We’ll let you know how it turns out.

Jim

Update: Well it’s been two whole weeks now with the new phones. Debbie had her phone fail once but I was able to reset it to factory default by holding down the volume, home and power buttons on power up.
We’ve installed software to backup our data to the memory card. We give these phones a big thumbs up. If you tend to be a little geeky this is definitely a phone for you to consider.

Jim

Backing up software is always something we think about after the disaster has happened. This past week I thought I’d delve into finding a solution to backing up all the computers I have in the house.  Up to now I’ve been taking an external hard drive that hooks up to a free usb port on each computer and backing up data to it but that is slow and arduous.

I happen to have a spare computer in the shop doing nothing and a few gigabyte hard drives to stuff into it. I downloaded a copy of an open source program called FreeNas that turns an old computer with a few hard drives into a storage vault for you data that can be connected on a network.

The set up was relatively easy; it is a live CD based on Berkley Systems Distro Unix  (BSD) that installs on your computer and then can be administered remotely through a web browser. There was a small defect in the setup configuration that I was able to fix once I got on the user forums and searching for the fault ( network timeout and disconnect ). The online administration GUI works well and gives you all you need to keep your online storage vault in good order.

I was able to have all my computers backing up to the FreeNas machine using either “Back in Time” application for Linux or “Microsoft Sync toy `in Windows. The FreeNas can be set up as a network share that can be viewed from your other Windows machines as a networked drive ( nice for drag or drop of files ). The Linux machine can use Samba or NFS to also drag and drop files to the FreeNas machine.

Power settings on the FreeNas can throttle back parts of the machine when it is in idle.  If you have an old computer doing nothing, consider getting a few large cheap hard drives for it and try FreeNas as your own local backup storage solution.

- Jim

Here is an overview of FreeNas from Jupiter Broadcasting:

I had a problem with our home theater pc the other day.  I’d installed Windows 7 and for the most part it’s been working nice. The interface seems cleaner and more responsive than Vista. One problem that had cropped up was that the Windows Media Center had broken my ability to record over the air high-definition tv. I had been using a work around to convince Windows Media Center to recognize my networked tv tuner and download an online tv guide so I could set up recording sessions.

In Linux I had been able to use a media center like application called MythTV which is open source and worked well with my tv tuner. The tv tuner can pick up the over the air electronic program guide so recording programs was a snap in Mythtv. The problem is that Mythtv was developed in the Linux field first and any ports to Windows are still experimental and buggy.

It seemed to me I needed to have both Windows and Linux working in the same computer >simultaneously<. Hmmm, that’s a tall order isn’t it? Not really. Most computers nowadays have more horsepower than what you actually need to carry out tasks. Technology called “virtualization”  allows a computer to have a split personality or several personalities at the same time. If you’re an old movie buff think of it like having your own schizophrenic Sybil in computer form. Only they’re all nice personalities.

Anyways a company called Oracle released a free software product called Virtualbox which allows you to split your computer into a “host computer” that can accommodate  a number of  ”guest computers” within itself. You can download the program for Apple Mac, Windows-based and Linux-based computers. I downloaded the Windows version of the program and installed it.

Once the program is installed you can create guest systems that can be different operating systems. The common term is creating a “sandbox” where you can build a system inside the main machine and run it without worry of crashing the main machine. Once you have reserved a space for a guest system with Virtualbox you can install the operating system of your choice inside it just like you were doing it on the main machine. I created a “sandbox” for a Linux system and installed it. Now I had a working Linux system running in a window inside the windows 7 machine.

That just boggles the mind eh?  In Linux I was able to set up MythTV to tune and record tv programs. With a little more tweaking you can share files between the virtual computer and the main machine. There is a small performance hit running inside the virtual “guest machine” but it’s not noticable that much. Maybe you have a problem where you need two or more machines inside the same physical box? Or maybe you want to try a different operating system but don’t want to lose what you already have installed on your main machine. Virtualbox is a neat way to make your computer a multifaceted tool.

Jim

It’s been a couple of weeks now and we have the new Home Theatre PC up and running! Presently only the Windows 7 system is running as we’ve been having a few problems getting the Ubuntu 10.04 to drive the i5 650 gpu to 1080i resolution .  So far I’m impressed with the setup, we cut Rogers cable loose since it was costing us in excess of $80 / month. Now we get our live tv from an over the air HD antenna setup.  Let’s have a look at the assembly so you can build one too.

SilverStone HTPC case

So here we have the case made by Silverstone.  It has two bays on the front for dvd or cd drives. The case will accommodate a micro ATX motherboard and ATX power supply. My choice was the ASUS P7H55 motherboard with an i5 650 cpu. I tend to over engineer machines – this one is very energy-efficient ( the cpu runs at 73 watts max ) but still has plenty of muscle to handle intense applications and games. The motherboard has the capability to upgrade to more powerful i5 and i7 Intel cpu chips down the road.  Lets have a look at the guts…

ASUS Motherboard P7H55

Here’s the engine that makes it all go. For the novice folks; the cpu chip has already been mounted to the board under the fan. To the right you can see two sticks of memory (ram) .  And on the left hand edge of the board we have all the ports and connections out to speakers,  keyboard etc.  Ok let’s stuff this turkey!

Left hand side of case with motherboard installed

This is the left hand side of the case with the top cover removed. You can see the two 500 gigabyte hard drives that sit on the bottom and to the right of the motherboard. Behind them is a small fan to pull cooling air between the hard drives. I opted to leave the fan unplugged because the drives don’t generate that much heat and the fan is too noisy. We’re not finished stuffing this beast, we need POWER….

Garden variety ATX power supply 550 watts

Here we have the ATX power supply that runs the machine. It has a ball bearing fan which runs smoother and quieter than the cheaper sleeve bearing fans that fail sooner due to dirt. Your most common PC failure can be attributed to cheap power supplies where the cooling fan fails and then the power supply burns up. Never let your PC repair guy steer you to a new machine when your present broke machine may only need a new power supply costing roughly $40!

Fully loaded with network card

This picture shows the machine fully loaded with room to spare. That green card on the left is a wireless network card which means no network cable (yeah! It’s PORTABLE – let’s take it to the BEACH!! )  I tied the loose cables up to improve cooling airflow though the case, with my aircraft electrician background I like neat wire cable runs.  It’s test drive time!!!!

HTPC in operation

Here we have our baby perched precariously on top of the tv. What you don’t see is the wireless keyboard that has become permanently attached to my lap while reclined in the comfy couch  behind this shot

The few short weeks we’ve had this machine operating I’ve found I’m exploring a greater diversity of programming through use of the Windows Media Center, Boxee, Miro Player, Live OTA broadcasts, DVD and finally on the net through Firefox such as Ustream, Justin.tv and Vimeo to name just a few. The under used projection tv now has become a huge internet media portal complete with 5.1 audio.

Interested in taking back control of your entertainment choices? You may want to explore this route. The initial outlay is high ( probably around $1k Canadian ) but I feel in the long run the system will pay for itself compared to the commercial alternatives out there at the moment.

If you have any comments or questions about the project please leave them with us here on the page. Thanks for visiting this site!

Jim  -  Geary Computers Inc.

So I’m sitting here waiting for the rest of my hardware to arrive from TigerDirect and NewEgg like a kid on Christmas eve. Both companies send me UPS postal updates via email on where my shipments are and whether driver Bob just stopped at a Timmy’s to relieve himself, get a double double and walnut crunch ( gotta love those GPS enabled tracking services ) .

The project at hand is a culmination of countless hours of research into building a small form factor computer that would turn my aging 52 inch rear projection hd tv into a multimedia powerhouse. High definition home theatre personal computers are nothing new but the technology has been refining itself for several years now. I’ve always wanted to meld several sources of entertainment from internet, dvd, terrestrial HD tv broadcast and cable into one box that is easily manageable. Time shifting needs to be a feature of the box because I work lousy shift work schedules and don’t want to miss certain shows. This planned “HTPC” will have all that for the price of a premium laptop.

The case is small form factor from a company called Silverstone; they make high quality cases for sitting on your entertainment shelf. It’s small, but not small enough that I can’t use common power supply modules and off the shelf computer parts. The motherboard just came on the market a few months back and is from ASUS; a brand I’ve been satisfied with many times before. The board has an unusual feature in that a video card is optional. Some of the new i5 cpu chips from Intel have the video graphics engine built into them for high-speed, high-definition performance. For storage I’ve chosen a couple Western Digital 500 gig Caviar hard drives. They are economical and solid workhorses. Two sticks of 2 gig dual channel ddr3 ram will fill the memory requirements since I’m staying with 32-bit operating systems for now. I get the ram from Corsair as, once again, I choose economical, sturdy parts that just work. I have an LG Blu-ray dvd rom going into the mix so I can stick my toes in the Blu-ray market and still be backward compatible with all other disc formats. There is no intention on burning discs so I save money there since Blu-ray dvd burners are still too expensive for my tastes. For internet / network connection I’ve chosen a wireless option only because I already have a 802.11n router in the house. For me to fish ethernet cable though the house is too much work and not worth the trouble. A small Sabrent wi-fi nic running 802.11n will get me onto the household network where I can tap the internet and access another piece of our entertainment puzzle. There is a neat little device hooked up to our household lan called an HD Homerun box. The Homerun is a dual tuner for receiving over the air high-definition tv broadcasts and encoding them on the network as mpeg4 streams. I’ve already played with this tuner for a few months now..(Thank’s Santa!) using MythTV on my Ubuntu desktop with fairly good results. During the Winter Olympics I was watching the CTV broadcasts in 1080 resolution which was eye-popping sharp, better than anything I’ve seen on cable. The software going into this project is Windows 7 Home Premium; it has its own Media Center to program and record any tv sources I throw at it ( a cable tuner pci card is a possibility in the future ). Besides Windows this machine will be dual bootable; meaning when you first start it up you can choose Windows or ( my favourite ) Ubuntu 10.04 Linux – which can handle Mythtv ( a similarly featured Media Center application ). So that’s where we stand right now, just waiting for the UPS guy to show up with the rest of the gear. Can’t wait to build!     – Jim