EXP4 - First Incarnation

The boxes were sitting on the front porch when I got home from work today. I unpacked everything, slapped it together, found an old hard drive and a CD ROM, and did a quick default install of Debian 4.0r6/AMD64.

It feels very nice. Every bit as smooth and responsive as the MythTV box I built last year. In fact I'm using it right now to write this blog entry.

The hardware leaves a few things to be desired. The power supply has one fan and no airflow through the bottom. The power cables are almost too short. The main just reaches the power connection on the motherboard. It's very quiet as is, but it will definitely need another fan.

The case was too big, but I used the MiniATX case I had on deck. Just had to move the power supply from the new case into it. I still may use the new case for some old hardware, but that is going to be a big screwdriver project for some other day.

There are still some configuration decisions to be made, so I probably won't have this thing running until next weekemd. During the transition I may run EXP /// on the VM I built for the proof of concept. I may also get completely distracted and throw Windows 7 on this thing just for giggles.

You never know.