From Logan 12/8/99
1) Totally Silent Operation: Ok, so you probably can't get that,
but
you can get close by using different cooling methods. The large case
fans (about 2" dia) are pretty quiet. If you make two large holes for
them in the case, they should have no trouble pushing air, and thus will
make very little noise. If you do that and disable the standard case
fan, you should get better cooling with less noise. You might be able
to reduce the voltages on the fans as well, but that can destory the
motors if you're not careful. Some P166es shipped by Compaq used to use
large passive heat sinks to save money. You might still be able to do
that with a Celeron 300A or an AMD K6-2. The celerons only dissapate
something like 8W if I remember the specs correctly. As for the DVD-ROM
and HDD, I find that most of the noise a ressonation throughout case.
You can minimize noise by mounting them with a dampening material.
Perhaps you could mount it using two soft foam blocks on each side or
suspended with springs or something similar. The same is especially
true for the DVD drives which usually aren't as thight of fit as an
HDD. But these modifications would probably require a special case
design (but you'd need that to turn it into a component system anyways.
2) Quality Output: It doesn't make any sense to use a standard DAC,
because then you won't get Dolby AC-3. In that case you'd have to use
SP/DIF. I don't know much about SP/DIF, but I would think it to be a
fixed sample rate (since it is not a computer thing, why have all those
different settings?), so you're up shit creek with that one. But you
could build an external DAC that does 5.1 output throught the parallel
port (assuming its fast enough) by sending it the raw data (one byte at
a time) and then using the control lines to switch the ouput of the DAC
to 6 different Sample and Hold circiuts followed by several op-amps.
3) Custom case is definitely the way to go. You could probably put a
little character screen in the front that interfaces through the serial
port. But at this point, you're probably gonna need Unix (Linux) to do
all of this. I hope you like POSIX :) Of course, DVD playback could be
real fun to implement...
4) Well, if you're not doing Unix, Win2k is definitely the best way to
go.
5) No thoughts here...
6) 196kbps sounds real nice when using BladeEnc or another good
encoder. A 3.5Gigs (500 for OS/sw) will store 41hours of music. Not
too shaby, and you can do much better with a 10 or 25 Gig.
7) You don't want to do VGA-RGB, the quality really sucks. I'd
reccomend an ASUS V3400/V3800 (TNT/TNT2 chipset). They optionally come
with video in/out, tv in/out (including tuner) and have hardware
assisted DVD decoding (which can augment your weak CPU).
8) From what I hear, DSL might be a better way to go. The cable
networks in many locations are saturated and only yield decent
performance when you're accessing data on their proxies.
9) Unless you can find a Baby-AT board (I haven't seen any of those
since the days of ISA, but damn they're small!), I think the Abit is
about as small as you can get and they offer a wide range of clocking
options.
From Gordon 12/8/99
I don't think having a DVD in your PC is such a big concern... because you're going to be buying a playstation2 when it comes out. hell, that's why i haven't bought a DVD player yet. holding... out... mind strong... will... weak...
so if it was my project i'd use a boot from lan system. we're trying NT2k server beta3 here, and if you get a premium version of the server, you get teminal server. that'll boot from a floppy. well... we're impressed anyway. and store your music on the server. with a video out capapble card you could do some file org with a mouse in the audio room, then use remote software for on/off/ffwd/back
From Adam 12/8/99
Digital PC sound: have you considered usb speakers? I'm not sure what's out there, but I've hear that it is supposed to be pure digital until the signal hits the speaker coils
Silent: I think you will still need a fan of some sort, or have a huge heatsink. You could probably buy some higher quality fans (ie ball bearings) which would make things quieter, and if you can hide it away in a corner.
Matt Black Finish: This I have done. A lot of autoshop painters etc will paint your case for you. We have done several of the offwhite type cases, including front cdrom and fdd panels, taken them in and had them painted black. The result is excellent, and only cost about $30AUS.
Large Hard disk: Well I just got a 13Gig for less that $300 AUS, so I guess it would be even cheaper there. Bigger the better I say. :-)
From Jay 3/7/99
I too have been giving a lot of thought to the problem of having a noisy system in the entertainment center. Although I am probably taking a different tack than you are on this one, you might be interested in some of my ideas.
One idea was to have a diskless workstation in a slender NLX case and motherboard. The ideal motherboard candidate for this is the ASUS P2B-N. It's a Slot-1 motherboard and includes on-board video, on-board audio, and (most importantly) an on-board 100MBit Ethernet interface from which you can boot. As I already have several servers and a 100Mbit LAN here at home, it's a natural fit.
With everything on-board, and no external drives to draw power, it may be possible to run this machine with no fan. More likely, however, it will need a single case exhaust fan to keep the temp down. A single whisper fan mounted properly in the back should not provide. I've seen black NLX cases that have room for an ultra-thin CD-ROM drive in them as well, although I don't expect to use one personally. I like having all my media on the network.
From Jim 25/6/99
John, I have very similar ideas. My system is a mini-tower with a trident vga w/ TV-out (Not so great, I need to try an external scan converter) and an Encore 5x DXR2. I use IRMAN to control the DXR2 software and a Radio Shack IR Extender to control the Stereo Components. Anyway my entertainment center is in a big wooden cabinet with doors. My AC-3 equipment and the CPU are in the cabinet and the TV is on top. It works quit well and the Computer display on TV is just barely usable for web surfing and such but the Creative Encore 5x DXR2 output is superb! I've even put in an extra fan to cool the DXR2 a bit and I can't hear it through the Wood cabinet.