Multimedia Computer: The Ubuntu Mindset

Last Monday I wrote in this space that I had succeeded in getting my Multimedia Computer running and that I had installed Ubuntu on it.  This was a great victory for me.  At the time, it gave me a great feeling of victory that I didn't want to dilute.  A few days have passed now, so I feel I can share more of the truth without spoiling that feeling of victory on my part.

It is still running and functioning fine as a computer, but I there are certain issues involved with making it function as a Multimedia computer.  One of these is the fan.  The original fan that it came with didn't have a plug to attach it to the fan plug on the motherboard.  I thought I'd fixed that by buying an adapter.  The adapter arrived; it is male.  I needed a female. (Insert joke about Ubuntu computer geeks here.)

No problem.  I had an old cheap fan purchased for an old project laying around.  I installed it.  I now remember reading a review of it with PROS--it is cheap, CONS--it is noisy.  That noisy part is being glossed more me even as I write this.  I currently have a female adapter on order.  Ten minutes of work will suffice to fix this.

The next issue is software.  Windows 7 comes with Windows Media Center installed.  You just sit down and run it.  The Ubuntu experience is different.  And it now becomes clear to me what the Ubuntu experience is all about.  To fully explain it, at least to my own satisfaction, I need to go back to the Bible.

In Genesis, when Jacob and Esau are introduced it says: And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents. To me this says that Esau like to push the edges of existence and do things that were hard.  Jacob, on the other hand, liked to enjoy the fruits of what was then modernity.  Were this written today, the description of Esau would remain the same while Jacobs might be described as a man who like living in houses with beds and indoor plumbing.

Some of you may already be ahead of me in transferring this to the context of computers.  Esau would be pushing to that more challenging mode of existence with Linux while Jacob would use Windows 7.  (Macs would correspond to whatever they were using in the fleshpots of Egypt for those of you who wish to push this a little farther.)

I grew up on the frontier, starting with a TRS-80 and moving to an Apple IIe and then finally hitting the PC river, as it were, more than twenty years ago.  I've been watching the frontier disappear ever since as we've moved from floppies to hard disks and CDs and DVDs and USBs.  Then came the Internet and the Cloud may supersede it all.  I've gone through all of the contortions that we had to back in the good old days just to get something to print for Heaven's sake.

All of those contortions are why we developed things like Windows 7 and Snow-frickin-Leopard and all of those other things.  Friends, let me tell you, as much as we gripe about these OSs, they ain't so bad.  They beat the Hell out of walking three blocks across campus to access your e-mail from a Unix account and download the file that was sent you using Kermit.  I was younger then, everything did work right, but that rosy glow doesn't make me think I'd like to do it that way all over again.

That being said: This is a hobby.  We do hobbies to stretch ourselves in safe, controlled ways.  I can pretend that I am back on the Computer Frontier as it was in the days of old, but do it while safely living in the modern world.

In other words, I've moved out of the hardware faze and into the software faze which is presenting a new challenge to me.  I will keep you updated, but now the smell of the spring flowers is calling to me.

Multimedia Computer: Part 1, The Case

I've taken my first step to building an Multimedia Computer; I've purchased the case. This is the same case that I indicated in the blog entry wherein I laid out my plan.

I pledge that I will try to take my time with this. Really. This is a hobby and there is a level of expense one expects with a hobby. I shall try not to exceed that quantity as ambiguous as it is. Having preached to myself a bit, let me proceed to a discussing of the case.

I am not much of a photographer. I concede that immediately. Were I a better photographer there are two things on the front that you would notice. In addition to the usual USB ports and audio and video jacks, there is a Firewire port. I hadn't even considered Firewire in this construction. Now I will have to because I've been given a choice: either get a motherboard that supports Firewire or live with the idea that I've got a place to plug something into that doesn't work.

The second thing you would notice is that this has a handle that folds out. This reminds me of the old "portable" Rainbow computers that Tandy put out. They had a six-inch screen, they weighed nigh onto 40 pounds, but they had a handle with which you could carry them, ergo they were portable.

One thing that I had been wondering, given the dimensions of the case, on which side would the motherboard be mounted: the bottom or the left-hand side. I now know that it will go on the bottom. Installing it will be an interesting exercise as there are a lot of cables and a lot of brackets. I will, no doubt, have to enlist the services of Lydia my lithe-fingered assistant.

The cables are bundled and covered by cloth, which is something new for me. It makes me think of this as a high-end case. It might also make me wonder why I am getting it for a relatively inexpensive price. I didn't have to look very far to see the reason and this calmed my mind. There is only one SATA power connector. I will need two of these, at least, if I am going to install two drives. It doesn't take very much imagination to believe that this device was designed and built when hard drives had switched to SATA but optical drives were still IDE. There is no longer a market for such cases and it is cheaper to sell them to hobbyists than it is to stick another SATA power connector in there. At least this is the story I will tell myself until the ghost of a murdered Chinese worker emerges from the power supply seeking revenge.

So, having opened the box, I learned that I need to order a $2-part. I should also note at this point that I neglected an important consideration in my original plan: a TV PCI card. This is the sort of thing I mean. It goes for about $50.