The Hardware

Continuing from my previous post, here's what I had left over for my new HTPC after I rebuilt my desktop PC.   I bought this stuff in a pinch at Fry's a few years ago because the northbridge of my previous desktop PC got fried (no pun intended) when the little fan stopped working and melted.

• Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 2.66GHz
• MSI G41TM-E43
• CORSAIR XMS2 4GB (2 x 2GB) Model TWIN2X4096-6400C5
• Galaxy GeForce 9600GT OC 512M. It has an HDMI output, which would be nice to get working since it would mean one less cable I would have to deal with. I like to play an occasional game here and there and I think it would be pretty sweet to play Trackmania on a big screen TV. Hopefully I can get that game to work on Wine, but I'll save that for a future post.

Stuff that I purchased

• Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 Media Center Kit. In retrospect, I wish that I had done some more research on this card since the Linux drivers don't support all the features of the card. The specs look great, but if they don't work in Linux then it's pretty much useless for this project. I know for sure that the IR port doesn't work, forcing me to have to buy a separate USB remote. I guess in some respect, it's good not to have the remote tied to the capture card. Support for the analog tuners was recently built into the Linux driver and they show up in dmesg, however, I haven't spent any time getting them to work yet. 
• Vista MCE Remote Control. I spent a lot of time getting the remote to work when I built my first HTPC since it was tied to one of the Hauppauge analog cards. This time around, I wanted to get something that was more generic and that didn't depend on another piece of hardware. That way I can swap things in and out without worrying about dependencies. 
• Antec EarthWatts 650W Power Supply. Didn't do too much research here, I just went to Fry's and got something quiet, power efficient, and not too expensive.
• Seagate Barracuda® 3.5-inch SATA 1-TB Hard Drive. This will hold the OS and MythTV recordings. I have another drive in my existing HTPC which I will eventually plug into the new HTPC, which will hold backups from my desktop PC.
• Internal S/PDIF Digital Audio Cable. Need this to hook up the GeForce 9600GT graphics card to the motherboard so that the HDMI port on the card will output sound. Hopefully it works as expected. 

Stuff that I plan on purchasing

• SilverStone GD02S. My current HTPC case is kind of an eye sore, not sure what I was thinking back when I bought it. The GD02S is on my Christmas wish list, so I've held off buying one for the time being. In the meantime, I've put all the parts in a case I had laying around the house so that I can start installing stuff. 

Next up, installing CentOS 6...