Take a look at this pretty cool piece. I am amazed at how well they all fit together. I am most curious as to how much power it consumes and how the images are displayed. My first guess is they all display white and he used the monitor controls to create the colors. But that is only a guess. Let me know what you think.

I also uploaded a few other things to Flickr which you can see in the feed on the side.

A s far as the OS, Tristan talked me into using Ubuntu. We’ll see. This will be my first time with Linux and I am not sure how ready I am to set up a server with it… I was looking around today though and I did find something that I thought was interesting. MP3Beamer is based on Linspire (another LINUX distribution) and includes a bunch of software that will allow you to “broadcast” your music to other devices across your network, including compatible home theater recievers and other networkable consumer electronics. It costs money unfortunately, (I’m guessing mainly for Linsipre, which I have somewhere… wouldnt install right) but thankfully not too much. Another intriguing bit about this whole MP3 Beamer deal is that they will actually sell you a PC with this software pre-installed. Albeit a pretty un-spectacular PC, but that fact is offset by the price; $399.

So with all of that noted, I am going to look for some open-source goodies that I can use to achieve similar results. If anyone happens to stumble upon something that they think is cool or would work for my purposes, please leave a comment below!

And for those who really cant find anything better to do, a complete history of every computer I ever built. *WARNING: Not for the non-geeky!*
THE PLANETARY CHRONOLOGY:

NEPTUNE was my first personal computer and the only one that is still in its same basic form today. Thats because its a Sony Viao PC-GR250, a laptop. The only one I didnt build. The hard drive died in this little beastie about 3 years ago (purchased in 2001), but thats about the only thing that been replaced. Its a P3M 1Ghz, 256mb of RAM with an ATI Mobility video card with an extreme 16mb of video memory. The new hard drive is 30gb, the old one was 20.

JUPITER was my first computer I built. It evolved over time, but the origional specs were: P4 1.8A, 256mb RAM, 6gb HD, GeForce4 Ti 4200, and a Memorex 52x CD burner, all on a Soltek motherboard. The first upgrade for Jupiter was an WesternDigital 800JB 80gig hd (one of the first with an 8meg cache). Next was a DVD-ROM drive. During overclocking the Soltek board croaked. I got an Asus P4P800 to replace it. After the new motherboard, I got a Sound Blaster Audigy 2. The RAM then got to 1gb via Corsair. The processor died due to strain after a few months and I purchased a P42.6C to replace it. I also bought a new SATA 80gig hard drive from Hitachi who bought the drive business off of IBM. The only problem I have with it is that the SATA connector on the drive broke so its kind of tricky to plug it in.

VENUS was the same basic config as Jupiter but in a new case. P4 2.6C, 1Gb Corsair RAM, WesternDigital 800JB 80gig hd, Audigy 2, CD burner, and DVD-ROM. Added to that was a replacement video card, a 9800 Pro 256mb, and a second Hitachi 80 gig hard drive. The two hitachi’s were put into a RAID array and used mainly for games. Supposedly a striped set of hard drives yields performance gains but they werent that great. As the years wore on for the Western Digital hard drive, it became noisy, actually screechy. Venus was intended to be as quiet as possible. The WD hard drive was replaced with a 160 gig Samsung drive. Performance of that drive is pretty underwhelming. Not recommended. I also purchased a wireless card that was designed to go with the motherboard (it fit into a special slot on the bottom). You may remember VENUS as the clear case with the green fans and blinding green lights.

IO was built about the same time as Titan was starting to take shape. IO was destined to be my media comptuer. Its heart is the familys old secondary computer that had been upgraded. It features an AMD Athlon XP 1800+, 512mb of RAM, a 200 gig Seagate HD, the DVD-ROM drive that came with the computer (doesnt work anymore, not really used), and a Compro TV Tuner. Video is handled by the long retired GeForce4 TI 4200. IO has recently undergone some effort to make it a little more quiet and help alleviate the temperature issues that were present while keeping things quiet. This computer is the one with the touchscreen that lived in the living room last year at school.

TITAN was my first foray into water cooling. It was also one of the most extensive re-designs of a case that I have ever done. The white/black with orange lights got mixed reviews, but I kinda liked it. The computer was supposed to use the same base as the others but wound up being mostly new components. The motherboard was a Gigabyte K8NS, an NForce3 Ultra unit that provided me with perhaps one of my fastest comptuers to date. An AMD Athlon 64 3200+ served duty as the processor with 1gb of RAM from a different vendor, Mushkin. The 2 Hitachi hard drives came back for this build, but a new 160gb hard drive was purchased for use in this machine. Also a Hitachi, this drive supported NCQ and a few other SATAII standards. The video department also got revamped this time via an ATI X800 XT Platnimum Edition video card. The new video card was actually purchased before I had decided to change processor/motherboards and thereby was a limiter on my adoption fo PCI-Express. Also a limitation was the ammount of drive space. Due to this limit, I wound up purchasing a NEC DVD burner to use as a single drive.

MERCURY is my newest and most current computer, as well as my second water cooled project. Venus still exists today in some form, but TITAN was totally scavenged/broken during the process of making MERCURY. I started this project with a goal of quality. I bought a case that costs twice as much as I usually spend. This was going to be a more conservative than previous computers. It started out as a simple transplant into a new case, but the core of the X800 got crushed during the move and the Gigabyte motherboard was shorted due to an incorrect pin-out on the powersupply. Both my fault. As replacements, a newer ATI X1800XT took video duties coupled with an Asus A8R-32MVP for a motherboard. The rest of the components remained, Athlon 64 3200+, 1gb Mushkin RAM, 3 Hitachi hard drives as well as the Audigy 2. A new wireless card was put into this build, as well as a different radiator for the cooling loop. Speaking of cooling loops, during the testing and fitting of the loop in this case, there was a leak and a lot of coolant managed to find its way into the DVD burner. A replacement from BenQ did the job and well I might add. Once the whole computer was built and leak tested, I went to install Windows only to find that the 160gb Hitachi had died unexpectedly. It was still under warranty so I shipped it back for replacement at no charge.  During the summer months, the temperatures in my room were causing the RAM to overheat. A flip of a fan fixed the problem, but I still felt an upgrade was in order. I procured a 2gb set of RAM from OCZ Technology with copper ramsinks and have yet to encounter a problem, heat or otherwise.

Surviving Computers:
NEPTUNE, VENUS, MERCURY, IO

Only a memory…
JUPITER, TITAN

In Utero:
CALLISTO