My favorite gift I gave
My Christmas celebration with my wife was delayed a week this year due to the unfortunate passing of my grandmother on December 20th of 2006. Being that we’re atheists, the day itself doesn’t have any special meaning other than tradition. So, we ended up celebrating on December 31st.
The favorite gift I gave my wife this year, was this multi-purpose media box that I put together with some parts I had laying around and a couple new things I bought.
First, here are the basic specs:
1 Athlon 1800
1 GB memory
45 G hard drive
NVidia 6600 video card with S-Video out/512 MB
1 wireless Nic
1 Abit MicroATX motherboard
The case I found was made by Shuttle:
http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/SN27P2.asp
Mind you I didn’t get the “barebones” package. I acquired just the case. The next key part was how to control the computer from the couch. I looked a couple basic remotes, but I thought that would end up being limiting. Sure I could use some software to build an “On-Screen Display” menu, but I think that would have limited the usefulness of the box. So I ended up settling on something I found on Ebay:
http://www.gyration.com/en-US/ProductDetail.html?modelnum=GC1105CKM&accshow=3
The mouse control is pretty good, though I could see how my arm might get tired after a while. It’s sensitive enough though, that you can just use a little wrist action to move the mouse around. The keyboard comes in handy when you need to do something quick that can’t be mapped to the mouse, such as mute the sound. The wireless receiver works well hidden in the back of the box.
The next step was installing software. I included emulators for Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, and general arcade games. I installed XaMp Studio so Kelly can listen to the online XM Radio feeds from the living room. The last thing I installed was Creative Media Source and mapped to Kelly’s mp3 drive, so she can listen to all her music from the living room as well. All via a wireless mouse remote and a wireless net connection.
The box hooked into my TV and stereo system smooth with RCA and S-Video cables. There is some initial noise upon bootup, but the machine runs as quiet as my Dish Network PVR box. Throw in some 10 foot USB extension cables, and you never have to leave the couch (once you power it on). Overall I’m really happy how it came out. I hope we get some real use out of it.
