Outside

Inside

Well, there is the <ahem> little beauty, fresh from my loft. And as the thread title suggests, I was wondering about making a htpc out of it. Think it's a sensible idea? It's a: PIII 600 mhz with 384MB RAM. I spose what I was thinking was that with that ducting i could get a pretty htpc case (does one even exist available to the UK?), put a nice quiet psu in and not worry about more fans. I was thinking about using a samsung 160gb hhd (I'll need a 133 controller, I know), a dvd-rw of some kind, probably a nebula electronics digitv card, and a graphics card with a tv out (not sure which yet. Any ideas?). It's not a bad idea to base a system round such a relatively modest cpu, is it?

Suggestions of any kind are most welcome

Depends on what you plan to do with it. Check out mythtv.org; they have a bunch of guidelines on what to expect from different kinds of hardware.

Well, it's for my parents, so it has to be simple stuff. I was thinking XP MCE or Showshifter.

consider this:

- cheap Ati VGA for excellent tv out (Radeon 7000/9000 - on ebay or similar) with stock passive cooling

- Hauppage PVR-250 for hardware TV-in and show shifting(great for pIII) - check out HTPCnews.com for great reviews - passive cooling

- samsung 160gb 1614N (and you DON'T need 133 controller, ata 100/ata 66 will work like a charm - especially when watching movies/plaing music/etc) - suspended

- some kind of remote control - it is very important, coz it makes using pc more like using DVD or VCR

- htpc front end software (paired with remote) - simple, on-screen menu driven, try myHTPC (freeware)

- try underclocking nad undervolting your CPU. Your cpu will work just fine, my setup is based on pIII733 underclocked to 500Mhz and passively cooled with PSU fan - previous setup was driven by celeron 300A@450 and it was enought for watching movies (but little to slow for myHTPC)

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most important thing with HTPC is not a hardware, but software - good front end with remote control. Watching movies without using mouse or keyboard is a holly grail of htpc IMHO. And the silent computer...of course

lot of hard work to configure, but a lot of fun at the end

I tried to hold back but I have to comment on how clean the inside of that pc is. That is one of the cleanest old p3 machines that ive ever seen. Do you live ina dust free invironment or what ehe. Spectacular job in taking care of it.

It definatly has possibilitys keep posting on what you decide to do with it

thanks boys. i was kinda thinking along those lines, VERiON. thing is I kinda want digital tv, which more or less seems to mean a DigiTV card from nebula. thanks for drawing my atention to myHTPC, i hadn't spotted that (has i turned into meedio?). and hah, thanks silverback. to be honest, it's cleanliness baffles me - it was in the loft!

and therein lies the rub. it was in the loft cos i *thought* its hard drive had died a death - nasty noises, and saying no operating system found (and the cd drive used to pop out). but after swapping in a spare 10gb hdd, i get messages saying promise ultra66 bios not loaded. so i think the hdd controller has died. so the hdd is currently plugged into the main board, and seems to be god awfully slow, i imagine cos it's on the same ide channel as the cd-rom. all of this, and my extravagant digital tv wants, are kind of tempting me towards a Shuttle ST62KS - once i got a quiet PSU, nice htpc case, samsung hdd, dvd-rw, remote, for the PIII i'd be in the same kind of price region...

...but it does seem a shame to waste it...

I'd suggest the 120 GB version; SP1213N. The motherboard's BIOS might not support LBA48.

Cheers,

Jan