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Project

My current projects are related to computers and their roles, i.e. GeeXboX HTPC, Passive IPCop, Retro Gaming PC.

HOWTO resolve “playback error” on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

January 8, 2008 in HOWTO, Hardware, Music, Project, Software by modul8r | 1 comment

My Xtra exhibits a “playback error” when trying to play certain mp3s. The resolution is to use foobar2000 to re-encode these mp3s. Specifically, click “File / Open” and open the respective mp3. Before you get started, you’ll need lame.exe. Extract the contents of the .zip file anywhere on your hard drive, then copy/paste lame.exe anywhere, for example in the foobar2000 folder. In the following steps, when prompted for lame.exe, browse to where you pasted it.

In the two versions of foobar2000 I’ve used, the track starts playing automatically, so stop playback if that’s also the case for you. Right-click on the file (the item in the playlist), click “Convert” from the menu, then click “Convert to Same Folder”. Choose “MP3 (LAME), 190 kbps, V2, fast” from the dropbox then click OK. Click “Yes” in the warning window that tells you there will be quality loss. Your newly-created mp3 will have a different filename and a newer timestamp than the older one. This newer one is (obviously) the one that should be copied to the Xtra.

The only problem I’ve observed is that sometimes, not always, the converted mp3 isn’t able to be fastforwarded or rewound, if those words still apply in the digital world. In other words, once you start playing the track, if you try to fastforward or rewind it, you’ll have to start over, so be cautious. I haven’t looked into that problem – I’m leaving good enough alone, or whatever the saying is.

Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

June 19, 2007 in Hardware, Music, Project by modul8r | No comments

Last week I spent some time writing a post about a new “car mp3 player” project that I had started working on. After running into some minor roadblocks I realized it might be easier to just get a portable mp3 player and use that instead of the old laptop I was originally planning on using. The main reason I wanted to use the laptop was to make use of existing resources and save a few bucks. The laptop wasn’t being used, nor was the 20 GB hard drive pulled from Erin P’s broken Rio Karma. Portable mp3 players are generally not upgradeable and the inexpensive models offer small storage, which are both deal breakers for me

One night I was browsing through austin.craigslist electronics and came across a 30 GB Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen NX for $50. The buyer reported it as being used for just 4 months, and in working order. I did a little research and the reviews were overall favorable. Plus, the battery and hard drive were both removable. The only potential issue was the fact that the unit did not offer a line out. It only had a headphone output, so my concern was that the pre-amplified output might sound distorted when connected to the line in of the EQ in my car. Oh well, I thought. Worst case, I could use a cassette adapter or resell the thing.

The seller was nice enough to drive down to Austin, from Cedar Park IIRC, and meet me in the smoothie area of Whole Foods on 360 & 183. It turned out that the model was the “Xtra”, not the “NX”, which was both good and bad. You see, from the small amount of research I did on these Zens, I had read of a known issue regarding the headphone jack. The plus side of the Xtra models, however, is that they have a larger display, buffer, and a blue backlight (instead of green). Want to guess what my favourite colour is? I asked him if he ever encountered issues with the headphone jack and took his word that he didn’t, so I took a chance and forked up the cash. Once back in my car, I connected it to the cable already in place and it sounded fine, as far as I could tell. Cool beans.

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Mine is a 30 GB, not 60 GB, although I can put a bigger HDD in there once the warranty is void.

Later that night, Nora was over to drink beer and play video games (does it get any better than that?). While taking turns playing WarioWare: Smooth Moves on the Wii and talking with brother while he was playing with his new Power Mac G4, we played miscellaneous songs that were left on the Zen. Or should I call it NOMAD, Jukebox or Xtra? He had a mixture of Vietnamese songs, mostly from a particular artist that sounded 80s-ish, as well as the most typical music you can think of. Think The Beatles, Elvis, Depeche Mode, Two Doors Down, 10,000 Maniacs (which I only remember because it was the first artist listed), 50 cent, etc. At that time, it was connected to the hifi in the living room, which was a better test for audio quality than my car. And, once again, it sounded pretty good. The thing to keep in mind is that, of course, the quality depends on the characteristics of the songs themself, so the best test would be to put something high quality on there. At any rate, it will be in my car and the mp3s that will be on it will be either ripped from yours truly or from others’ “album rips” (NOT INDIVIDUAL TRACKS!), so rest assured that the quality will be sufficient.

I also read that the bundled software from Creative sucked, and that 3rd party software applications were recommended, so I didn’t even try Creative’s offering. I ended up getting Notmad (not a typo) Explorer from Red Chair Software, which increased my investment $25. Still, I think $75 is a very reasonable amount of dough required to play 30 GB worth of high quality mp3s in my car. I tried moving the existing songs to the file servere, where I would later go through them to delete the crap and keep the interesting things, but I kept getting error messages and would have to start the process over (from what appeared to be the very beginning) each time. This rubbed me the wrong way, as it wasn’t a nice introduction to this new software, but at least Red Chair had information related to the error message on their website. Although there wasn’t a workaround to the issue, at least I knew that it was related to the mp3s being somehow corrupt. After I found that out, I just deleted all of his stuff because I was anxious to get my stuff on there. Since then I haven’t had any errors, so I’ll give Red Chair the benefit of the doubt and point the finger at the previous user or, more specifically, the source of his purportedly corrupt mp3s.

As far as looks are concerned, I think it’s made of adonized metal. All of the buttons are on the sides and the jacks (AC, USB, headphone) are on the top. I don’t think a docking station option is available because there’s no interface on the bottom of the unit. It came with the AC adapter and a car charger, the later of which I was both glad to hear, considering the application. It’s basically as tall and wide as a 12 oz soda can and about an inch deep. It also has a black (faux leather?) case. Since there’s a hard drive inside instead of flash memory, it’s not ideal to carry around, i.e. jog with, but, again, that’s perfectly fine for what I’m using it for. Brother thinks the “Smart Volume Management (SVM)” EAX setting will normalize/compress the audio, resulting in all tracks being played at the same volume. I hope that’s indeed the case, so I don’t have to adjust the volume depending on the album, while in shuffle mode. I haven’t yet experimented with that feature enough to determine if he’s correct. The user’s guide says it “intelligently controls the dynamic range of audio, providing a superior audio experience in difficult listening environments such as in a plane or car”. WTF does that mean? Layman’s terms are great but only when bundled with technical details alongside.

It would be super if it had a remote, something I haven’t researched yet, because it’s a small nuisance to control it while driving, i.e. adjusing the volume, skipping tracks and toggling shuffle. “Right now I’ll take what I can get.” -Joel Plaskett

Blah blah new light thingie blah

May 23, 2007 in Project by modul8r | No comments


Skina

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The birds glow blue, so it matches my blue theme. Time for a new n30 t0ky0 pic.

No power switch, as it’s marketed for outdoor use, but that’s OK becuase I have it connected to a power strip (the kind that’s supposed to sit under a computer monitor), so it’s easy to power on/off.

Netflix and Windows Media Center 2005

May 8, 2007 in Hardware, Project by modul8r | 3 comments

Here we go again. For the third, perhaps, fourth time, I’m investing in a replacement AGP video card with DVI-out for my media center PC. The last few efforts to get the most out of GeeXboX resulted in me returning them – usually along with the DVI-I cable for either store credit (Discount Electronics, bah) or a refund (Fry’s, woot) because I couldn’t run GeeXboX at the higher resolutions I was aiming for, at least in combination with my HD TV.

After streaming Soylent Green through Netflix’ relatively new “Watch Now” feature this weekend, I realized that I would prefer to watch these movies on the living room TV, sitting on the sofa, instead of on my gaming PC monitor, sitting in that dreaded computer chair. Mother says I need to get out more anyway, and I take it she means my room. My ass hurts enough from late night weekend gaming sessions.

It turns out that, in order to stream, you must use Internet Explorer (Firefox is incompatible), which means there’s no way it will ever be integrated into Linux-based GeeXboX. That means I’d have to go the Windows route, which I was considering doing anyway, in order to play HD content from my NASLite+ file server. So, now I have two excuses to install Windows Media Center Edition 2005 on my media center PC that’s currently running GeeXboX.

Since GeeXboX is a bootable CD, I can easily choose to run either OS upon booting. Either press a key on the keyboard to boot to GeeXboX, or don’t and it will boot to MCE 2005 off of the hard drive. Unfortunately, hard drives are noisy, but I’ll just have to live with it (at least, until I can get a great deal on a CF card, and use a CF-to-IDE adapter like I have in my IPCop firewall). But I’m not getting another CF card and adapter until I know MCE 2005 runs (well) on this hardware, so I’ll use a spare WD 20 GB HDD in the meantime, for testing purposes.

Considering my current MSI Radeon 9250 AGP 8x video card is limited to S-Video out (which is the best I can do with GeeXboX, so it’s a great fit), and that MCE 2005 can run HD resolutions, I took a look on austin.craigslist for an older, passively cooled ATI video card with both DVI and S-Video out, and DirectX 9 support, and I found exactly what I was looking for: an ATI Radeon 9550 AGP 8x for $40. $40 was a little steep but I got started on this project last night (playing around with MCE on existing hardware) so I don’t feel like waiting for something to ship. Now, now, now! I’m gonna pick up the video card from a “short guy with a gray shirt and jeans, holding a video card” at Starbucks on Parmer around 7 this evening.

I did some research on MCE 2005 hardware requirements and it turns out that:

Media Center has higher hardware requirements than other editions of Windows XP. MCE 2005 requires at least a 1.6 GHz (or equivalent) processor, DirectX 9 hardware-accelerated GPU (such as a recent ATI Radeon X series or nVidia GeForce 6 series), and 256 MB of System RAM. Some functionality, such as Media Center Extender support, use of multiple tuners, or HDTV playback/recording carries higher system requirements.

It installed on my system last night, with my 9250 that only supports DirectX 8, which makes me wonder how much of a requirement DirectX 9 really is. Maybe that’s just a way of differentiating “modern” video cards with older ones. Still, it seems confusing to call it a requirement instead of a recommendation, if it will let me install the OS using something that doesn’t fit the requirements. The same goes for my 1.3 GHz Athlon XP 1500+ CPU.

Anyway, I see no reason why the Netflix streaming service won’t work with MCE 2005 and I’m more anxious to see how “taxing” HD content is on this hardware, which is another reason for upgrading the video card: the new one has twice the amount of DDR memory.

The info below was mainly for personal use while doing (compatibility) research, but I may as well leave it here to assure you’ll fall asleep if you haven’t already.

Mobo is AGP 3.0 compliant (up to 8x @ 0.8V)

Current video card: MSI Radeon 9250 (DirectX 8) 128 MB – Universal (1.5V & 3.3V) physical interface.

New video card: Radeon 9550 (DirectX 9) 256 MB – 1.5V physical interface.

05-09-2007 update:

They say “you learn from your mistakes”, but I say “only if you remember what you learned”. I forgot that my HDTV doesn’t play well with ATI cards when it comes to DVI, until I scratched my head yesterday after installing the new card and connecting it via DVI. There’s still hope, though. After looking through old posts (which, in retrospect, I should have done before getting that card yesterday) I recalled that two nVidia cards worked just fine using DVI to connect to the HDTV, whereas 3 ATI cards didn’t. With that in mind, I’m throwing another sixty bones at the project in hopes that this XFX PV-T44A-WANG GeForce 6200 256MB AGP 8X DDR Video Card w/TV-Out & DVI will follow the nVidia compatibility trend. I checked pricegrabber and filtered 256 MB, DVI, nVidia, AGP and this was the cheapest passively cooled card. I’m very glad to see that a 6 series was available without a fan. Also, I guess you can call me a XFX “fanboi”. My 6600 GTs were XFX, as is my 7600 GT. They seem solid so far, so I’m gonna stick with what works. Specs here. By all means not a gaming card, but hopefully works well for my HTPC (home theater personal computer) application. I read on Wikipedia that “there are still reports of people successfully unlocking pipelines and overclocking the newest 6200A NV44A chip ranges, using older Geforce drivers.” Turns out that this card has a GeForce 6200 A chipset, but I’m not certain if it’s a NV44A. Still, presumably it is, since the model name is “PV-T44A-WANG” (note that T44A portion). I’ll see what google has to say regarding “unlocking 6200A NV44A”.

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$2 for 1-2 day shipping, so hopefully it will be here by this weekend, so I don’t have to stay up late during the weeknights like I have been, fiddling with this stuff.

Oh, I’ll probably sell those ATI 9250 and 9550 cards on craigslist after this works and market them as “FANLESS, GREAT FOR HTPC!”.

05-15-2007 update:

The nVidia 6200 does output via DVI to the HDTV as I suspected (and hoped) it would. I’m running 1080i now, technically a little less than that due to overscan compensation, to shrink the video to fit better to the screen.

Brother and I initially spend some time trying to troubleshoot why the process of playing a video (even small ones, to rule out large/taxing videos being the problem) would make the computer “take a dump’, the way brother put it. Different media players didn’t make a difference, nor did 3 different drivers (2 from nVidia and 1 from the XFX CD). Videos would play immediately using no driver (essentially, the Windows built-in VGA driver). It turns out that, surprisingly, a 4th older nVidia driver did the trick. Isn’t that something? Anyway, we started testing HD content and some are choppy (although not that bad) and some have lots of artifacts), so the latest hurdle is figuring out “why?”. As far as choppiness is concerned, my best guess is that it’s due to the CPU, which is an Athlon XP 1500+ (1.3 GHz, first core)), so I’m going to upgrade it to the fastest the mobo can handle, which is a 3200+ (2.? GHz), since I recall glitch telling me that a better CPU is more important than a video card when it comes to playing videos (as compared to gaming). I’m currently seeing what austin.craigslist has to offer, regarding Athlon XP CPUs, and trying to sell the 9550.

05-24-2007 update:

The 9550 sold for $35. I probably could have gotten a lot more for the card, since I must have gotten 10 or so responses. Anyway, the first responder got it and that’s that. We met in the back parking lot of Threadgill’s on Lamar. I always feel like people in the area (that notice) are going to think a drug deal is going on, when I make these kinds of craigslist transactions, as cash is traded for a mysterious item. Yes, I worry too much about other people.

Picked up a 3200+ on craigslist for $50. The guy said the CPU was suspect – not in those words, but I like to use that word, since I borrowed it from when I worked at a computer sales and service shop that I won’t name – and was initially hesitant to even sell it, since the computer that it was in would reboot periodically. We both agreed that, more likely, the problem was due to the motherboard. I trusted him on his offer to refund my money within a week if the CPU seemed bad. It took a BIOS tweak to get the BIOS and XP to properly recognize it. I was a little worried at first that it might not be compatible, even though I had already done research and determined 1) that mobo supports up to 3200+ Barton core and 2) the only 3200+ have Barton cores. I need to stop second-guessing myself so much, give myself more credit, etc.

The nVidia 8800 780p demo plays great now – big difference. I’m also able to play a couple of racing games (Live for Speed and Richard Burns Rally) at full resolution/graphics settings and get playable frame rates. On top of that, I can stream a 1080i video over the network from the file server and it’s just barely choppy. Good stuff! Now I need to get more HD content, heh. Right now I mainly have demo videos.

Speaking of racing games, I picked up a Microsoft Sidewinder force feedback wheel (w/ pedals) at GCW for $10. Ironically, the week before, I went there to specifically look for a force feedback wheel and I settled with a non force feedback Microsoft Sidewinder wheel (again, w/ pedals), because it was in great shape and appeared sturdy. They’re both USB and work like a charm. Oh, the ff wheel didn’t come with an AC adapter, so I grabbed one from the AC adapter bin at Goodwill that, IIRC was a marginal amount of current/amps lower than required. At any rate, it works, so I “won’t argue with success” (another term borrowed from my old boss at that computer shop). I love me some force feedback, as it (obviously?) makes the experience more realistic. Brother seems unsure. I’ll get a picture and/or video of the driving setup in the living room. It’s really nice sitting there right in front of the 36″ TV instead of at my computer. I’m sure other games that have more text, like RPGs wouldn’t be ideal for this computer, since small text is difficult to read after the conversion and what-not, but for racing games, where you’re spending most of your time driving, it seems like an ideal setup.

So that’s that, right? Project complete? Of course not. Now I have a noisy hard drive to deal with. Since I’ve been spending too much money as of late (mainly on a Wii and games), I’m going to start off by trying some basic, inexpensive methods to reduce the HDD noise. silentpcreview.com has some interesting ideas involving foam and elastic bands, to name a couple. Also, once I find out what size chassis fan (well, technically you could call it a CPU fan, since it cools the “radiator” that’s attached to the CPU as a heatsink), I may get a fan that got favorable reviews on that website for being quiet, but only if I can get a good deal, because I’m already using the “ultra low” fan setting in the BIOS and it’s pretty darned quiet without the hard drive.

austin.craigslist

March 26, 2007 in Gaming, Hardware, Project, misc by modul8r | No comments

Sunday was fruitful:

Quake 4 with box, manual, clean discs – $6

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The seller claimed that he never played online and he uninstalled it from his PC. For six bucks, I decided it was worth the risk that I won’t potentially be able to play online, due the CD key already being in use. I know where he lives anyway, so I could egg his house, or something, if warranted. “Just like the good ‘ol days. You can waste your life away.” -Joel Plaskett. I have a feeling “Everything will work out fine” -Joel Plaskett. I used to play lots of Quake 3 Arena and was pretty good at it (IIRC, Q3DM7 FTW). In fact, my first gaming PC, an Athlon 700 MHz with a 64 MB AGP 4x GeForce 2 GTS, was built after seeing a friend Josh play Q3A. I stopped playing around the time I was introduced to CS, and wasn’t interested in Q4 probably because I was involved in BF2. This will be quite a change of pace from CS:S and BF2 (especially the Reality Mod), as Q3A was a much faster game, so presumably, Q4 will also be. I’m now on my way to Wikipedia to see what the general consensus is on Q4.

1 stick of Kingston 512 MB PC3200 RAM – $20

Project Retro Gamer PC had a free dual-channel memory slot that was asking to be filled, since Erin so generously gave it to me. Running GeeXboX, the upgrade probably won’t make much of a difference, but I may run MCE 2005 in the future, so I couldn’t pass up a matching, brand-name stick for twenty bones. They are about $35 new, so $20 is fair. As a baseline for crudely measuring video performance, I have a HD (720p I believe) nVidia 8800 demo video that was very choppy the last time I ran it, and I believe it ended up locking up the PC. I will try it again this evening, after the RAM upgrade and update this post with the test results. Update, it didn’t do shiat to that video – still froze.

1 HP LaserJet 6L with spare (brand new) toner cartridge, delivered – $30

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It all started when father gave me his old 6L, which has worked like a charm for me over the years. I don’t recall him having problems with it either. Well, it started acting up a couple of months ago, “multi feeding” (pulling too much paper). Brother cleaned its innards and that resolved the issue for a short while, until it returned along with another issue where the printer makes a loud noise and prints (usually) solid black pages. Upon closer inspection, it seemed to be the laser part (a metal box on top with a yellow warning sticker about lasers) that was making the noise, so we decided it would be best to just buy a used one at Logic Approach in South Austin. We’ve seen used 6L units there before, for $19. In fact, mother and one of her friends each bought one, per our recommendation. Unfortunately, there was only one left and it was in bad shape so we declined.

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All was not lost though, because I found a Logitech Wingman Force Feedback USB Mouse on the 50% off rack. Although it had no price tag, the word “Trash” was written in marker a few times on the box. It didn’t sway me. Brother chuckled when I expressed interest in it, and I said something in return like “Well, if I can get it for five bucks, who cares if it actually works.” The clerk opened the box and we all giggled after taking a closer look at it. The mouse and pad are one unit – that is, you can’t remove the mouse from the pad. Additionally, the mouse is limited to a certain “square” area, mostly at the top of the mouse pad. So, your wrist stays put and you control it with your fingers (which is how I game anyway, with high sensitivity). An AC adapter is included to drive the motors, or whatever. He let me have it for $5, but didn’t have any recommendations for where else we could look for a 6L.

Brother and I were initially skeptic about the fact that the mouse was attached to the pad because, as we all know (but may not realize), you periodically have to lift a mouse and put it back in the center of your mouse area. Well, that’s impossible with this mouse, so the question was posed, “What were they thinking”? The answer, I now know, is “Outside the box!” I connected it to Retro, downloaded the latest version I could find of the Wingman software for 9x, and installed it. When the mouse is at the top-left, the mouse cursor remains at the top-left, and so forth. Compare this to a normal mouse, where the cursor stops, but you can keep moving the mouse in that direction (hence, if you move too far, you have to reposition the mouse by picking it up and dropping it back, as previously mentioned). As far as the force feedback is concerned, I’m not sure if that part is working. I do feel some friction depending on what the mouse is moving over, and can “feel” the edges of the screen when I get close, but I was also expecting “rumbles” in the supported games (3 included: Gruntz – 1999, Heavy Gear II (Black Talon?) 1999?, Railroad Tycoon II – 1998) that I never ended up feeling. Granted, I didn’t spend much time with those games, so hopefully I was being impatient. One thing that suggests to me the mouse may be defective (besides, of course, the words “Trash” written on the box) is that the mouse itself has a blue LED, yet mine has never lit. The blue LED on the mouse pad, however, does light. After I play around with this gizmo some more, I’ll update this section.

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Back to the 6L. Brother and I ended up finding one at Discount Electronics for $39. Considering I already had a brand new toner cartridge from when father gave me the printer, and the 6L rubs me the right way, for a good, stable, low-cost, network printer (it’s attached to a print server), as well as the fact that it was the only one they had in stock, I took the plunge. After a few tests, it exhibited the same “multifeed” behaviour, which meant that I’d end up with store credit at Discount Electronics – a place I’ve been before that’s becoming commonplace. A quick peek on austin.craigslist brings us back to the beginning of the story, sort of. I ended up spending too much store credit ($9) for some “ice blue” USB-powered mini Christmas lights that caught my attention on previous browsing sessions. Sorry, they’re called “USB Deco Light”. Or is it Lights? I mean Its. Obviously, a new addition to Project Neo Tokyo. I have so much blue stuff already, I decided that blue will be my theme, going forward, besides anything that cycles colors, of course. This means it’s time for a new (version 4, I think) Neo Tokyo picture, which will be used as my avatar for forums, etc.

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Hacking FRAPS

March 16, 2007 in Hardware, Project by modul8r | No comments

FRAPS is nifty but even when synching my games to 60 FPS, they are obviously choppy. This results in a less than pleasant gaming experience, in addition to lowering my “performance”, which is important considering I want to capture video clips to put into a demo.

So, I’ve been trying think out of the box, for another method of capturing in-game video, and here’s what I’ve come up with so far.

My video card is dual head, which means it has two DVI outputs. My monitor has a VGA input, which is no problem because the card comes with a DVI to VGA adapter. What if I get a second one of these adapters and connect to it a VGA to S-Video adapter, then connect that to an external video encoder (think “Dazzle”). The video encoder (USB or Firewire) would then connect to a second computer, which would be handling the encoding. Theoretically, it sounds like a great idea. What’s really cool is this wouldn’t lower the performance of my gaming computer whatsoever, since the encoding is being handled by the video encoder and second PC.

What helped influence this idea is that, at the office, I’ve been helping our developer test a USB video encoder, which has a S-Video input.

I’ll bring one of these devices home this weekend to test. Hopefully I can find one of thsoe VGA to S-Video adapters locally, for around the same price.

Update on P2B

March 15, 2007 in Hardware, Project by modul8r | No comments

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    • we are the female robots

_.,-*~’`^`’~*-,._.,-*~’`^`’~*-,._.,-*~’`^`’~*-,._.,-*~’

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The deal went through yesterday evening without a hitch. I met an older guy with “child molester” spectacles, who drove a silver minivan like my brother’s, full of boxes. He apparently sells used computer components for a living, or at least spends a lot of time doing that. He told me he had something like 60 other bundles like the one I bought.

All of the components were as advertised. The RAM is PC100 Samsung brand with ECC (what the seller called “server RAM”). The PII-450 had a silver-colored passive (fanless) heatsink, which I was very glad to see. He even included some IDE cables, SATA cables, and a burned CD with the P2B manual, BIOS updates, etc.

If any of my readers are interested in building their own retro gaming PC, or may be in the future, this is a great, inexpensive foundation, so let me know and I can buy more from him. Other required components would be a hard drive (something like 4 GB should be plenty), sound card (i.e. Sound Blaster 16 ISA), video card (Voodoo, early GeForce), case, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers.

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Last night, I removed all of the components from the Pionex case then brought it outside and cleaned the dust out of it, using the Intex Quick-Fill with the help of a three to two prong adapter and extension cord. Since I didn’t know the history of that P2B board, I didn’t want to swap everything over then boot it up to find out the board was bad, so I first put the P2B in the Pionex case (keeping the original power supply in there) and powered it, listening for beeps. And it beeped, of course, because there was no video card. OK, that’s an easy swap. I put the Voodoo3 in, and listened and only heard that one quick beep, which means “all is well”. Who needs a stinkin’ monitor. Afterwards, I swapped more components, booting up the PC periodically listening for rapid beeps. After I moved it into my room, I updated the BIOS (from 1008 to 1011 I believe) then customized the BIOS for my needs. I initially thought I would have to re-install Windows 98 SE, because it wouldn’t let me boot, even in safe mode (instead, the PC would reboot when Windows started to load). That problem turned out to be due to not having the correct RAM setting (ECC enabled) in the BIOS. Windows 98 happily installed the new motherboard components and peripherals.

If any of my readers have older, DOS/9x games to recommend, i.e. fun ones you used to play, please do so here.

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Motherboard upgrade for Retro Gaming PC

March 14, 2007 in Hardware, Project, Uncategorized by modul8r | 1 comment

I spotted this ad on austin.craigslist:

Great Starting Point – Motherboard, CPU and RAM – $20

This starts with a rock solid Asus P2B AGP Motherboard as the foundation. The CPU is an Intel PII-450 and to round it all out is three sticks of 128MB memory for a total of 384MB memory.

This motherboard has the Intel 440BX chipset and on-board USB, parallel port, 2 serial ports, and PS2 mouse and keyboard ports.

The general consensus on the VOGONS forum seems to be that a motherboard based on the Intel 440BX chipset is the best overall choice for Retro Gaming PCs. On top of that, it’s an Asus board, and I’ve had a good experiences with them over the years. It has 1 AGP slot, 4 PCI slots, and 3 ISA slots. Those ISA slots are important because some “retro gamers” use multiple sound cards, sometimes requiring 3 slots, i.e. if you want to use a Roland SCC-1.

The Dell machine I’m running now, for this project, is based on the Intel 440LX chipset, and has 128 MB RAM and a PII-300. Granted, I probably won’t actually run 384 MB, extra sticks are always welcome. I’m curious if these RAM modules are 100 or 133 MHz. Regarding the CPU, 450 MHz may be too much for older games, but I’ll leave it in there to start off, with the option of putting the 300 MHz in its place if needed.

Hmm, what case to use? Maybe the Pionex case that Jim so graciously gave me.

I think $20 is a good deal. Let’s hope it goes through! I’m meeting the seller this evening at Chili’s for the exchange.

My Computers 2

March 9, 2007 in Hardware, Project by modul8r | 1 comment

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Obviously, I couldn’t bring this stuff to Austin. It most certainly would not have fit in the haul from all anyway. Most cards, RAM, and CPUs were scavenged. The big boy on the right was all show and no go – a Pentium Pro 90 MHz or something. Nice unique case but much too large, practically speaking. It’s as big as that fucking garbage can! It’s unfortunate I didn’t (still wouldn’t) have the room for it. Did I contribute these metal boxes to a landfill or did someone pick them up?

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  • Hostname: RUSTY
    Role: Gaming / Daily Driver
    OS: XP SP2
    Case: Powmax ???
    Mobo: Asus A8N-SLI Premium
    Chipset: NVIDIA nForce 4
    CPU: Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2 GHz); ? cache (? core, Socket 939)
    RAM: Corsair TWINX512-3200C2PT – 2 GB (4 sticks) DDR400 XMS3200; Dual-Channel w/ Platinum Heat Spreader (CAS latency: 2-3-3-6)
    Video: EVGA 8800GTS 320MB Superclocked, PCI-X
    HDD #1: Raptor WD360GD – 36 GB, SATA, 10k RPM (Vista Ultimate)
    HDD #2: Raptor WD740GD – 74 GB, SATA, 10k RPM (XP Pro)
    Power Supply: Antec TruePower Trio 550 Watt
    Audio: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
    Mouse: Logitech MX-518
    Mousepad: Cyber Snipa Tracer
    Accessories: Belkin Nostromo SpeedPad n52
    Monitor: 21″ Dell (Sony Trinitron) – bought used for $40!
    Display resolution: 1600×1200 @ 85Hz
    Tidbits: 2 IDE CD-R/RW, 1 IDE DVD-ROM, 1 IDE CD-ROM, 1 USB DVD-R/RW (some of these are spare drives that I’m putting to use, so I don’t have to swap discs to play games that require them)

    10-15-2006-007-rotate-right-small.jpg


      Old 6600 GT cards with Zalman coolers pictured, that I traded for a Kenwood KA-7100 I miss the blue LEDs.
  • Hostname: GEEXBOX
    Role: Media Player and gaming machine for racing simulators
    OS: XP Pro
    Case: Shuttle XPC SN41G2 V2; Erin P, thank you for giving it to me!
    Mobo: Shuttle (proprietary) FN41V3.X
    Chipset: NVIDIA nForce 2
    CPU: Athlon XP (Barton) 3200+ (2.2 GHz?)
    external frequency: 200MHz; multiplier: 11 x
    RAM: 1 GB PC3200 (2 x 512 MB); Dual-Channel (200 MHz)
    Video: XFX PV-T44A-WANG GeForce 6200 256MB AGP 8X DDR Video Card w/TV-Out & DVI
    Power Supply: Shuttle proprietary (? watts)
    Audio: Creative Soundblaster Live! PCI

    02-23-2007-001-small.jpg

  • Hostname: N/A
    Role: Retro Gaming (DOS and Windows 9x games)
    OS: W98 SE w/ Unofficial Service Pack 2.1a
    Mobo: ASUS P2B
    Chipset: i440BX
    CPU: PII 450 MHz (passive heatsink); 32K L1 Cache, 512K L2 Cache
    RAM: Samsung – 384 MB PC100 ECC
    Video: 3dfx Voodoo3 3500, 16 MB (AGP); brother, thank you for letting me borrow it!
    HDD: Maxtor – 4 GB, IDE
    Floppy: Single 5 1/4″ enclosure accepts both 3.5″ and 5 1/4″ disks, thanks to Goodwill Computer Works
    Audio: Creative Soundblaster AWE64 (ISA)
    Accessories: Labtec LCS-3010 shielded speakers
    110824-th.gif
    Monitor: 19″ MAG 986FS

  • Hostname: AUDREY
    Role: Hardware Firewall (between cable modem and LAN)
    OS: IPCop v1.4.11
    HDD: Using a 512 MB Kingston CF card for the hard drive, via a IDE-CF adapter (less noise)

  • Hostname: INSPIRON
    Role: Digital Recording Studio (my laptop, my brother’s project)
    OS: XP SP2
    Dell Inspiron 8500
    CPU: P4 @ 2 GHz
    RAM: 1 GB (2 sticks)

  • Hostname: JIM
    Role: peetwopee
    OS: W2K SP4
    Case/Mobo: Gateway Select 1200CS 0023767867
    Chipset: VIA KT133/KT133A
    CPU: Athlon (0.18 core) 1.2 GHz; 128K L1 Cache; 256K L2 Cache
    RAM: 512 MB (PC100, although mobo accepts PC133)
    HDD1: Seagate – 20 GB (OS, Program Files)
    HDD2: Maxtor – 60 GB (peetwopee data)
    Power Supply: Antec SmartPower 350W

    01-06-2007-003-small.jpg

  • Hostname: NASLITE
    Role: File Server
    OS: NASLite+ with files from the CD copied to a USB flash drive. Booting to kicker/config floppies.

    Mobo: Asus K7V (UDMA66)

    CPU:
    AMD Athlon 800 MHz
    cache size : 512 KB
    bogomips : 1595.80

    RAM: 768 MB (PC133)

    IDE Disk Drives (all 8 MB cache):
    160 GB Samsung SP1614N
    160 GB Western Digital WD1600JB-00GVA0
    250 GB Western Digital WD2500JB-00GVC0
    200 GB Western Digital WD2000JB-00EVA0
    Total of 704 Gibibytes (GiB = useable space)

    Misc:
    Video adapter: Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM T PCI (2 MB!)
    NIC: Fast EtherLink XL PCI (3C905B-TX)
    Power Supply: ENlight 300W (HPC-300-101)
    And black Asus 80-conductor IDE cables

    Performance:
    About 9.7 MB/s read, 11.1 MB/s write
    (Transferred a 775 MB .wav file to/from NASLite+ using FileZilla as a quick/dirty test through a Linksys 10/100 switch)

    01-06-2007-001-small.jpg

    • New GeeXboX machine

    February 21, 2007 in Hardware, Project by modul8r | No comments

    02-23-2007-001-small.jpg

      Note the (red) passively cooled video card and (black) sound card.

    Thanks to Erin, I now have a “cooler” GeeXboX machine. In exchange for some computer help (video card and external hard drive installation, which, of course, took way longer than it should have), she gave me her old Shuttle PC. I’ve seen these before and they are great small form factor computers, although I don’t know much about the reliability of the components and noisy they are. I believe they use proprietary form factor motherboards, which is an advantage over Mini-ITX, because the later limits your choice on motherboards, processors, and other components. This leads to the questions “how good are Shuttle motherboards?” and “who makes Shuttle motherboards?”.

    This little guy came with a chassis, motherboard, Athlon XP 1500 MHz CPU, 512 MB RAM (1 stick, DDR400), an IDE DVD-ROM, and a proprietary small power supply (output in watts?), onboard video, audio, and NIC.

    Add to that the fact that my Radeon 9250 AGP and Sound Blaster Live! PCI cards both fit inside! The mobo has exactly one AGP slot and one PCI slot. Although the mobo has onboard sound and video (with a S-Video output and 2 VGA outputs, oddly enough) I’m sure my cards are better without having to find out what’s onboard. Plus, I’ve heard that the CPU isn’t “hit” as much when you use cards instead of onboard, so this should improve performance.

    02-23-2007-006-small.jpg

      Pretty small chassis eh? Although it’s difficult to see, the “radiator end point” of the CPU heatsink is the metal piece on the left, between the chassis and chassis (LED) fan.

    Not that it really matters, but it’s much more cosmetically appealing than the other GeeXboX computer (a standard mid tower). Also, the other motherboard and CPU is my brothers (although we share most of our belongings), so if and when I ever move, this GeeXboX machine can come with me. So, um, that makes it portable too.

    Initial tests went great with the exception of a .wmv file I tried to play (a GeForce 8800 demo). It lagged almost to the point of freezing the video. I’m not sure if this is because I need to download better Windows Media decoders as part of a custom .iso from the GeeXboX generator. I’ll try that out this evening. Update here, it didn’t help. 02-23-2007 Update, it’s because that video is 720p =) glitch and I are interested in seeing if more RAM will help. That video is a good “baseline” to see what exactly helps performance. Not that there’s much realistically that I can change besides adding more RAM.

    I’m already thinking of what I can do to make it passive, or at least closer to passive. In the BIOS, there’s an “ultra low” fan speed setting that makes it the least noisy, but my goal is silence rather than quietness. This leads to the question “how hot do these Athlon XPs get?” Can they be passively cooled? Would there even be room for one of those massive CPU heatsinks? What I’ll do is attach one fan at a time (CPU, power supply, chassis) and see how much noise they make individually. I think the chassis fan is the loudest of them all. 02-23-2007 Update, I disconnected the (small, 4400 RPM) fan that’s for the nForce 2 chipset. Thanks to glitch for the recommendation that it’s probably not needed, especially since onboard video is disabled and I’m using an AGP card. The temperature increase of the motherboard and CPU was very minimal – only a few degrees C. They’re still under 40 degrees C which should be very cool, although I’m not sure what the ideal temperature of an Athlon XP is. I also swapped out the chassis fan with a spare LED fan (2 colors, pink and purple) of the same size. This fan seems to be quieter and it adds to the whole “cool factor”. It’s not obnoxiously bright – you can only really see it if you look at the PC from the back. Sitting on the couch with all the lights off in the living room, there’s only a faint glow reflected against the wall, so it shouldn’t be distracting to the video viewing experience. I unplugged this fan too and watched the CPU temperature increase to 60 degrees C, and that’s when I plugged it back in. I’m sure it’s still safe but until I do more research I didn’t want to risk anything. It was a lot more quiet though, with only the power supply fans running. Oh, one more thing I noticed last night. The CPU actually does have a passive heatsink! Through a few “pipes” the heat is channeled up towards the back of the PC, where it looks like a radiator. The said chassis fan mounts (easily, I might add) on that radiator to push the heat out of the PC. About the power supply, once I find out how many watts the system (CPU, video card, sound card, DVD-ROM) needs, I may get one of these passive power supplies. That would mean 2 less fans (which the current power supply has) and less heat (so maybe I can get away without the chassis fan).

    Now that I have more horsepower, I can potentially run Windows MCE 2005 at 1080i, but there are three issues with going that route:

    1. Is there enough HD content to justify it? Most of the video files I have are at low resolutions, so would it even matter that I’m running at 1080i instead of whatever my S-Video output is running?
    2. My HDTV is not a widescreen, so when I run video at 1080i, a few inches from the top and bottom are chopped off. This results in a smaller picture, although the quality is higher, of course.
    3. Hard drives are noisy, and one would be required for MCE, which is another reason to run GeeXboX, as it boots from a CD and runs in memory.
    4. I would need a video card with DVI out, and a DVI cable (AGAIN!). I just returned a video card and DVI cable to Fry’s, for the second time, as part of this project (well, related projects, I should say) after I spend time trying to get GeeXboX to run at 1600×1200.

    So, in conclusion, I think I’m going to stick with GeeXboX mainly because of the lack of HD content that I’m interested in, i.e. modern TV shows. HD n0rp is nice but doesn’t warrant the time and effort alone.

    02-23-2007-011-small.jpg

      Note the small chipset fan (which is now disconnected) and the passive CPU heatsink above it. The mobo is easy to access by removing the DVD-ROM/floppy tray (pictured on top).

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