General Rebuild

I've been talking about this for a while now, but finally pulled the trigger after I did a major renovation of my "work area". Basically my work area layout was/is a computer desk with an old beat-up credenza that I bought from Texas Tech Surplus years ago for $10 as a "return" on the left side. It all work well (after a fashion) since I could keep my main computer on the desk part and do all my various projects on the 66" credenza. However, it was neither efficient nor asthetically pleasing, but since it was 66", and made of solid wood (its old remember), I was never terribly motivated to do much about the situation. About as energetic as I got was to rearrange the furniture in the office (at my wife's prompting) when we repainted the room, at which point I picked up the glass-topped computer desk off of Craig's List for $40.

The next motivating force ended up being the rather innocuous purchase of a 19" LCD TV to replace the little (13") old tube TV that we had mounted to the wall in the office. I bought the thing used at the First Saturday "computer flea market" for $85 a couple of months ago. That left me with 2 problems, plus one opportunity.

• First I knew that the LCD wasn't going to fit on the old-style TV mount that was there.
  
• Secondly I didn't want to go back with another wall mount putting BIG holes in my drywall.
• Thirdly, virtually all "flat-panel" type TVs can be used as computer monitors as well as TVs.

So, what to do? In the end, I decided to take the difficult, but comprehensive route. Follow along as I try to lead you through my convoluted logic:

1. Take down the old mount, patch the hole and repaint, leading to-
2. Build a "hutch" to go on top of my credenza that would have an area to attach the LCD mount, leading to-
3. Taking the credenza out to facilitate the construction, leading to-
4. Refinishing/rebuilding it so that it would better handle the equipment that goes into it (more on this later), leading to-
5. Pulling all the equipment out of it, which included the: UPS, home File Server, Desktop Workstation, and Obsolete media archiving rig (again, more on this later), leading to-
6. Rebuilding the desktop workstation, leading to-
7. Building the Home Theater PC, leading to-
   
8. Rebuilding the Home File Server to handle Windows Home Server OS, which I had traded for some old parts.

So, now that I'm on step 8 of this Propellerhead's Odyssey, I feel like I can discuss what all when into this epic adventure!

Step 1 through 5 were pretty straight-forward, although it did require me to do quite a bit of wood-working. I'll make more sense when I offer up pictures in the future. The hutch, although clearly not a work of art or much of an example of craftsmanship, does it's job. It has a section on one end that allows for the LCD TV to be mounted on an articulated arm, which in turn allows me to push it out of the way or pull it out to use as a monitor or watch TV while I've got something going on the main computer. It's already proven its worth yesterday by allowing me to work on my workstation while I was using it as a monitor for the HTPC build, then for the kids to watch TV on. It also has a 42" long shelf that allows a number of things to be put out of the way and a cork-board that I can use for notes and momentos. The main thing is that there was VERY little cost associated with it since it's made off left-overs from previous projects. Of course I bought the LCD mount, and a few bolts to attach it along with some paint, but that was it!

After all the sawdust making and painting was done, it was moved back to the office and put into place (kudos to my brother-in-law Jim who provided the necessary muscle), it was time to deal with the desktop....well, actually the desktop PLUS the HTPC at the same time. Here's the deal; when I bought the parts for my desktop, I wanted certain parts, but couldn't quite afford the Gigabyte motherboard that I really wanted, so I settled for the lower spec'd version with the processor I wanted (Intel E8400/3.0Ghz Core 2 Duo). Along the way I added things such as 4Gb of faster RAM and a Blu-Ray optical drive. Then last time I was in Lubbock it was talking to my buddy Pat about building a HTPC since he had built a nice one. To my surprise he offered me the case to his along with the parts that were left in it after he scrapped the idea and pulled the HDD. So, of course I did a trade! My old X41 (replaced by the X300) went to my friend Kym for a camera lens and the $100 that went to Pat for the case.

Here's the kicker; when I opened up the HTPC, I found that although it had a low end (E4200) C2D processor, it was riding on the Gigabyte MB that I had originally wanted for my desktop. Soooo, when I went to rebuild my workstation, it involved both computers! I did a the MB swap, and the CPU swap, and the boot drive from my desktop when into the HTPC, while a SSD when into it's place.

So here's the rundown on the Desktop Workstation rebuild:

• Gigabyte GA-EP45-U3 Motherboard running an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 cpu
• Mushkin 60Gb (Sandforce) SSD "boot drive", Seagate 1Tb "storage drive"
• Mushkin 4Gb "Blackline" RAM
• HIS Radeon 4650 Video Card
• DVD Burner, Blu-Ray drive, Magneto-Optical drive
• Windows 7 Home Premium

The HTPC build ended up being:

• Gigabyte GA-EP43-U3 motherboard running an Intel Core 2 Duo E4200 cpu
• Hitachi 500Gb HDD
• Mushkin 2Gb "Silverline" RAM
• nVidia GeForce 8400GS (passive cooled) Video Card
• Blu-Ray/DVD Burner combo drive
• Current XPP (because that was already loaded, but will get the last W7 license I own)

So basically, both build/rebuilds happened together and currently running fine, although I'm not quite finished since the HTPC really needs its W7 load, but that can wait. I'd love to ultimately have an SSD boot drive in it and move the other drive to storage, but that too can wait. The only other things that need to be done to the workstation is some replacement software since I elected to go 64-Bit W7 and most of what I had doesn't run on it and I need to find a cheap video card that's run on it so I can use the LCD TV as a third monitor if I need to.

This does leave item #8 though, meaning I need to pull out the file server which currently has Windows 2000 Server on it, exchange the 40Gb boot drive for a 160Gb one that I have in the parts bin and hope the SATA RAID controller works with the Windows Home Sever load when I put that on in the next few days!

Let's add up the costs besides what we already owned:

• $50 for a 3 license load of Windows 7 Home Premium which works out to something short of $17 per computer (1 on my wife's Z61m, 1 on my Desktop Workstation, 1 on the HTPC).
• $100 for the HTPC parts package from Pat which yielded the motherboard upgrade for the desktop, as well as the rest of the HTPC build-up that will go into my A/V cabinet and handle streaming video plus anything else I can think of for it to do.
• $125 for the Mushkin 60Gb SSD boot drive for the desktop rebuild.
• $25 for the Sony Blu-Ray drive for the desktop rebuild which allowed me to move the Blu-Ray/DVD burner combo drive to the HTPC. That was $50 from Craig's List.
• $0 for the parts trade to get a copy of the Windows Home Server OS to go onto the file server.
  

The total ends up being about $300. So, all in all, a lot got done and very little money got spent which is the always the goal! Right in the middle of this, I ended up making another $50 or so, by flipping another one of those Dell Latitude D620 to a buyer.

Oh, can I just say that the desktop workstation (which has been renamed "Blackbird") is VERY FAST!!!