My Mini-ITX Custom Adventure

[exangel]

When I was 19 years old, I got the brilliant idea in my head to build a mini-itx custom into a large jewelry box with a 7" LCD in its lid. my dad thought it was such an interesting proposition that he funded it, even though the obscure parts cost about as much as a standard full featured desktop. This was in 2003.
I had also decided that Windows would be inferior for such a project.

I got about this far:

Spoiler

This was the second time I was going to install Gentoo Linux on a system. This time I had decided to be hardcore and start from stage 1 (meaning, I compile the kernel myself).

It took me roughly 4 attempts and 2 1/2 weeks to figure out that you just don't ever want to start from stage 1 if:
- Your processor is roundabouts 600mhz.
- Your screen is 7" and you're not prepared to stare at it for a couple hours or so a sitting.
- Your competency level with that particular distro and stage is on the newb level: following a step by step printed manual and still fucking up at some point in the process causing you to start over repeatedly and re-experience the pleasure of watching white text scroll across the screen for a day and a half or more while it compiles. Just to discover that you left something out or did something wrong or want to make changes to see if a different driver will work or increase efficency.

I wound up gifting the system that was secured to a board (that wouldn't fit in the jewelry box without possibly destroying the box), as well as the LCD display, to an ex-boyfriend that fancied putting slackware on it and installing it in his car. He got it working but he never did tell me whether or not he installed it in his car.

It was a tumultuous but brief love affair with Gentoo, and I now have a much greater appreciation for debian and *buntu. I've also fiddled with slax, knoppix, damn small linux, and ancient implementations of SUSE, Redhat, and Mandrake.. but I haven't installed Linux on a machine in like, three years.

Edit: Also fiddled with FreeBSD on a laptop I had briefly 4-5 years ago and liked it.

 

[prowler]

It was a tumultuous but brief love affair with Gentoo

Lol'd
I wanna see a final picture of this

 

[arctic_flame]

You can do a lot with mini-ITX. My ITX adventure ended with a box containing a Intel core i5 and a ATI HD 5770.

 

[exangel]

It was a tumultuous but brief love affair with Gentoo

Lol'd
I wanna see a final picture of this

Gratz on 3000 posts.

As for a picture with me and Gentoo.. somewhere, on the internet or not, one of my ex boyfriends has a picture of me at the LinuxWorldExpo in NYC in 2003 or 2004 with a license plate hanging around my neck like bling that said Linux on it.. I'm not going to ask him for it.. but that's as close as it'll ever get.

 

[raulpica]

Lovely project

Too bad it didn't end well

I remember Linux distros being a LOT more user-unfriendly, back in 2003. I also remember using Mandrake Linux some years before that

Setting up things was a mess, at the time. Not like today, where you just fire up Ubuntu from LiveCD and all of your hardware gets recognised in a split second.

I for some reason miss MSDOS, its crappy autoexec.bat and the subsequent drivers issues, though

Ultimately getting things to work was half the fun of installing a game!

 

[exangel]

Lovely project

Too bad it didn't end well

I remember Linux distros being a LOT more user-unfriendly, back in 2003. I also remember using Mandrake Linux some years before that

Setting up things was a mess, at the time. Not like today, where you just fire up Ubuntu from LiveCD and all of your hardware gets recognised in a split second.

I for some reason miss MSDOS, its crappy autoexec.bat and the subsequent drivers issues, though

Ultimately getting things to work was half the fun of installing a game!

In 1996 I made my dad buy me Windows95 on floppy disks (13 floppies. that was a heavy box considering few commercial software packages span more than a single dvd disc now)
Because I had somehow destroyed the line in my autoexec.bat that loaded (ATAPI?) my cd-rom driver when I started Win 3.1
and I had convinced him I absolutely needed the cd-rom drive to work and there was no other way to fix it.
This was before our family owned a modem, so as far as I knew I was telling the truth.

I had a brief stint of messing around with 486/586 laptops ranging in speed from 100mhz to 266mhz after I happened across some on ebay for $50-150 dollars in 2001 and didnt get rid of my last clunker until 2003. I liked the hideous white Compaqs for the most part and if it was in good enough condition it'd set it up with some sort of windows and resell it with a nicer looking auction page or trade them. I gave one to an old friend (literally, in his late 60's) who'd never owned anything more complicated than an answering machine, vcr, or line mixer. It was one with an internal 28.8 modem, and 166 pentium i think, and it cost me less than $100 altogether but when he recieved the package his joy was priceless. He had a local friend set him up with a local dialup ISP (i told him whatever he did to not get AOL)..
I also had a couple sub-266mhz Toshiba Satellites but sold those to neighbors.

the one i had for the longest time and did the most fiddling with was a Fujitsu because it was just such a solid build and none of the parts were showing wear. I was running some sort of linux with fluxbox on it for a long time because it had a small hard drive but it was a 233mhz pentium and it ran xmms okay. i wrote one of my best poems on that thing, and i liked whatever text editor i was using an awful lot.

The only real problem I had with all of these machines was the 800x600 resolution that was standard on laptops of that era. Only the highest end laptop/notebook pc's of 1998 supported 1024x768 in the native resolution (though prior models supported that resolution for a couple years prior, they did so by panning or external monitor support). With the Fujitsu I overcame that lack of screen space easily because Fluxbox supports multiple desktops.

 

[raulpica]

In 1996 I made my dad buy me Windows95 on floppy disks (13 floppies. that was a heavy box considering few commercial software packages span more than a single dvd disc now)
Because I had somehow destroyed the line in my autoexec.bat that loaded (ATAPI?) my cd-rom driver when I started Win 3.1
and I had convinced him I absolutely needed the cd-rom drive to work and there was no other way to fix it.
This was before our family owned a modem, so as far as I knew I was telling the truth.

I had a brief stint of messing around with 486/586 laptops ranging in speed from 100mhz to 266mhz after I happened across some on ebay for $50-150 dollars in 2001 and didnt get rid of my last clunker until 2003. I liked the hideous white Compaqs for the most part and if it was in good enough condition it'd set it up with some sort of windows and resell it with a nicer looking auction page or trade them. I gave one to an old friend (literally, in his late 60's) who'd never owned anything more complicated than an answering machine, vcr, or line mixer. It was one with an internal 28.8 modem, and 166 pentium i think, and it cost me less than $100 altogether but when he recieved the package his joy was priceless. He had a local friend set him up with a local dialup ISP (i told him whatever he did to not get AOL)..
I also had a couple sub-266mhz Toshiba Satellites but sold those to neighbors.

the one i had for the longest time and did the most fiddling with was a Fujitsu because it was just such a solid build and none of the parts were showing wear. I was running some sort of linux with fluxbox on it for a long time because it had a small hard drive but it was a 233mhz pentium and it ran xmms okay. i wrote one of my best poems on that thing, and i liked whatever text editor i was using an awful lot.

The only real problem I had with all of these machines was the 800x600 resolution that was standard on laptops of that era. Only the highest end laptop/notebook pc's of 1998 supported 1024x768 in the native resolution (though prior models supported that resolution for a couple years prior, they did so by panning or external monitor support). With the Fujitsu I overcame that lack of screen space easily because Fluxbox supports multiple desktops.

Awesome, never owned Win95 on floppies, only the CD version

I remember having a lot of MSCDEX (that was the CD driver!

) floppies around, in case something went wrong with my autoexec. I remember Norton killing my Win98, destroying my autoexec in the process. That was the first and LAST time I've ever used Norton on one of my computers

I also loved those "Windows installation boot floppies". They had a little menu which let you install windows auto-loading generic CD-ROM drivers, or let you go into a DOS prompt with CD-ROM support. Very very handy.

Actually didn't have a laptop until late 2006. Always preferred towers, also because laptops were REALLY bulky, at the time. I remember I also tried to repair a 486 laptop when I was 13. I actually repaired it initially, but later killed it opening it to see what was inside

I can now actually open and close back a laptop in something like 15 mins

I recently fixed up some old towers (not too old, we're talking about AMDs around the 1800+ mark) and gifted them around, or sold them for cheap.

Aw, never tried Fluxbox, always went with KDE or Gnome. I might try putting it on my Dialogue Flybook a33i (that thing's SLOW with XP, but it doesn't have drivers for Linux, natively), but I might have serious issues with the Touchscreen drivers >_>

Ew, 800x600. I remember using 1152x864 already back in 1998 on my huge ass CRT monitor

Fluxbox seems really nice. Should really give it a spin.

 

[myuusmeow]

One of these days I want to build a Mini-ITX HTPC, especially now that many of these have a 9x00 GPU in them perfect for video acceleration.

Small case + Atom Mobo with WiFi+ Atom + 2GB RAM + 500GB HD (use as a server too!) + Bluray reader would be nice.

 

[exangel]

If anyone's curious as to what I'm computing with now, I usually use my aging ASUS F3Ka notebook for browsing, email, and IMs. I do my gaming, graphics editing, and multimedia from my custom built workstation described in this post.

Edit:
And feel free to tell me what your rig consists of if you like, I'm pro-geek and though I'm not into mods or overclocking myself anymore, I love hearing about other people's projects/accomplishments.

 

[raulpica]

Currently on a self-built (with my loving hands) rig constisting of:

CPU: Intel Core2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3,0GHz Dual-Core
RAM: OCZ Value 2x2GB PC2-6400 (meant to get another 2x2 to fill the other slots, too bad I haven't been able to source them locally anymore, and btw 4GB isn't bad)
MB: ASUS P5Q-E (I totally LOVE this mobo

Too bad I didn't end up getting the P5Q3, though. I'd have DDR3 now :C)
GFX: ASUS Nvidia GeForce GTX260 896MB SP216 (Was great when I bought it, now I can't even play Just Cause 2 at max detail :C)
PSU: A uber-cheapo 550W PSU. This led to my PC totally melting the power outlet some weeks ago. It's still working though, so I can't see why I should change it.
CASE: A nice ASUS Vento one, can't remember which, though.
HD: WD Black Caviar 320GB SATAII (Originally it had to sport 2x500GB in RAID1, I then later scratched this idea. Too bad, since my Win7 score is totally weighted down by the HD speed)
Monitor: A nice Samsung SyncMaster 22" 16:10 almost-FullHD connected with DVI (I dunno why, but it looks like TOTAL CRAP when connected using a HDMI cable. Probably because it was a cheapo cable)
DVDRW: A bad-ass Pioneer DVR-216D SATA (Probably the best Writer I've ever had, and I used a DVR-114 IDE on my previous PC)
KB and Mouse: A uber-cheap Logitech wireless combo. (I'd have loved a Razer mouse, but I'm just too used to having a wireless mouse

)

I originally thought of at least overclocking the CPU (can easily fare at 3,6GHz on air cooling), but since it's still working like a charm, I won't probably touch it. For now

 

[lakaiskateboarding]

My setup:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ stock speed (2.4GHz)
RAM: 2x1GB DDR2 Geil + 2x512MB DDR2 Geil
MB: ASUS P5K-e Wifi-AP
GFX: ATI X300

Will soon be replaced by a ATI HD 5450 (to watch HD movies)
Case: Gigabyte 3D Aurora
HD: 2 x 320GB Samsung F1
Monitor: 17inch Philips (I like the size, if not I would have already gotten myself a bigger one.)

As OS I use Ubuntu 10.04 and I love it.

Edit: I also have a Mini-itx system: Intel D945GCLF, but I don´t use it.

 

[Sephi]

Mid range gaming rig, built last year for about $750, $950 with monitor. First time build

CPU: Intel Core2 Duo E8400 @ stock 3.00GHz
RAM: G.SKILL PI Series 2x2GB 800Mhz in dual channel
MB: Asus P5Q-Pro
GFX: Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512MB
HDD: Western Digital 640GB Caviar Green (slow, I know, but I didn't realize when I ordered)
PSU: Corsair 550W
Case: Cooler Master 690
Monitor: Acer X223w 22"
OS: Win7 Pro x64 (free courtesy of MSDNAA)

 

[Joe88]

why did this turn into a post your own specs thread...

 

[exangel]

Because I was curious about raulpica's setup & figured he'd answer.
And I wanted anyone else who wanted to respond to feel welcome too.
Custom building is what i've always been interested in most when it comes to computers.
Most of all, i was hoping if anyone else was into mini-itx customs they might mention if they'd done a successful project.