Ok i ran out of things to do today because i would normally be hung over but im not so i need things to do. I decided i was going to make a HTPC from the old Sky box because we have moved to Sky+ there are now a few things that are troublesome about that meddling box!!! 1) Its small i will need to get a 90 degree AGP thingie i know they exist because i have seen them, anyone have a link? 2) Anyone know how powerful VooDoo 3s are because i dont want to fork out for another card with S-video for putting into a TV 3) PSU There is a psu seperate board in the Digi-Box but i don't know of its power and if it will handle Motherboard+HDD no optical or floppy. If so does anyone have a pinout of both an ATX PSU plug and the SKY one??? erm what else. 4) the frong panel of the box has a 11 pin ribbon cable coming from it. That is used for the buttons on the front, IR and the LEDs on the front too. Pinout anyone??? or even better a serial pinout so i could impliment that to the HTPC. 5) has it been done before??? i mean Sky box to HTPC? I think thats all for now. thanks for your help all. Ben
For the first question: AGP riser -- server part, sorry no links. Power supply: 1 U server power supply, flex atx power supply, micro atx power supply... Pictures? Everything else - my friend : Google! Good Luck
I spent most of yesterday doing it, cutting the back off the sky box with no saw!!! because i dont have one so it involved a lot of folding snapping sharp edges and cuts. Erm then i took a PSU apart and got that in there, no need for buying a new one, erm..... Kinda fit the MOBO in there, dusnt really fit tho so its gonna look a bit evil at the back inless i cut a nice back for the whole thing. Erm..... Im not going to bother with the AGP riser, just buy a VGA-Composite converter thing for £40 because i know where to get one (maplin) and i dont want a voodoo 3 sticking out the top of the box without one for its S-video, What other prob;lems were i having??? i cant remember..... I am not needing to bother with space for CD drives or anything because its just a DivX/MP3 player from the network. So it should all fit neatly. Well VERY snugly. I dont have a bracket for the HDD or standofs or anything to hold the mother board down so sticky double sided pags will do. Its pretty ghetto really!!! Ill get some pictures soon. Ben
Hmm well pear shaped springs to mind when thinking about my latest creation.Firstly the 13 gig hdd i put in there died so i put in a 1.7 gig drive and i tihnk thats just gone as well. Gets in BIOS to Checking for boot from IDE 0 then hangs!!! GREAT not to worry, i have a 120 gig hdd and a get 2 gig drives left i think. well i hope. Anyone have any ideas what may be causing them to die??? EM interference from the high voltages in the PSU cas its now caseless, not to mention dangerous!!! Erm.... the mobo keeps deciding not to turn on because it is touching things beneath it cas i didnt have a mobo tray to use i just let it lie on a static bag on the inside of the Digi-Box case? Its all going wrong!! Whats worse is that i got Windows installed and everything on it with the 1.3 gig drive then it just dies!!! Noooooo. But i ahve Drama portfolio to write now so i tihnk its probably going to get left till tomorow. Im quite surprised though, i have actually spent time on this mod. Normally i just leave it half finished. Just look at my server to realise that!!! ha ha. [Cough] Dual P3 [cough] caseless [cough]!!!!
DON'T LIE A MOBO ON A STATIC BAG!!! Sorry to shout, it just has to be said A lot of them contain metal (used to prevent static somehow) and can cause shorts on the motherboard parts. -Sam
Thanks for the heads up, luckely there was no harm done. Must have a good bag! But i managed to perminantly borrow some plastic sticky standofs from my electronics class which are now holding the board steady. the 13 gig drive is actually fine. I did possibly the most obvious thing and didnt check jumpers and realised that there is a Master if no slave present one. Because i had put a cd drive in there to install the OS it was on master. which didnt work when sinle drive!!! Duhhhhh. So im back with 13 gigs. Just installing drivers on it again now. So i need to do exacltly the same thing i did yesterday with it and put DivX player etc... on the dang thing. Does anyone have any sources for a VGA-Composite Video converter that is cheeper than £40 like in Maplin. Thanks Guys
ive heard that the vga -> composite converters are not overly good quality, just thought i would give you a heads up.. Cheers
Hmmm, sorry mate, I had been thinking of doing something to my sky box since it became available, and if u have a site or something on it and it was going to be your master mod or something im sorry. I didnt steal it, best of luck with it though. Hopefully you will have better luck than I! Tell me how you fit your HDD when you get around to it by the way. Thanks!
Wahoo, it works. I spent this afternoon At my grandads cutting and drilling with REAL tools and i have a HTPC. Just a few small problems to iron out. I want to have it turn itself off at a certain time, i know exactly how to do this with XP with the shutdown command. But me being awquad am using 2k Pro, and i dont want to shutdown, i want to hibernate it so i can boot straight back to how it was before. Anyone got insights? Also, the cheepest wireless keyboard and mouse around that is reasonable quality and range??? I will take some pictures when the case is actually finished. Ben
