My primary motivation to replace the laptop with a HTPC has been the poor sound quality of the laptop. The laptop is connected to my very old HI-FI (which I will talk about a bit later) and since Caitlin broke the CD player and not to mention everything I listen too is in MP3 format the poor sound quality has been a huge issue. What made this possible was the score of a CPU and mainboard and although not ideal since it’s a chip that generally runs very hot it does have plenty of grunt.

I recently upgraded Fiona's PC mainboard, as it was often not booting, blue screening and generally not being well behaved, on closer inspection I noticed that 8 of the 9 1000uF capacitors had started swelling and leaking, a trip down to Dick Smith, $7 cash and 2 hours to unsolder and re-solder the new ones in. My concern is the new capacitors aren’t exactly high quality and I have the nagging suspicion that they will have to be replaced again. Inspecting the CPU fan and heatsink, although it looked a little dirty in reality it was clogged with dust, the design of this heatsink is odd, the fins are so tightly packed together that it acts as a trap for any dust the heatsink fan blows over it.

I set the Mainboard up on the desk and left running for 24 hours and it seems okay! So now I have- CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton Motherboard: Soltek SL-KT400A(-L) VIA Apollo KT400A

Okay time to rummage through the parts box to see what parts I have handy- Memory: 256MB DDR memory module, I will need another 1 of these Video: GeForce4 MX 440 (64 MB) with TV out, that will do very nicely. Soundcard: Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, although this is 6 years old it is an awesome card and I only recently replaced it with a Creative Audigy 2 Disk Drive: Seagate 20 GB, 7200 RPM, ATA/100, perfect all it needs to do is run the software as all the media is on the file server. Network: Linksys EG1032 v2 Gigabit, I pulled this out my Domino server it never performed any better than the standard NIC due to the really slow disk drives in that box TV Adapter: Fusion HDTV, BDA Tuner (DVB-T Lite) I pulled this one out of my desktop

So I still don’t have a case and power supply, looking around for a while I ended up choosing the- Case: Thermaltake Bach with Media Lab in Black I have always liked Thermaltake kit; it’s well made without the excessive price tag and the Bach case is designed for HTPCs, supports a full size ATX motherboard and is reasonably attractive. The VFD screen and the excellent remote control are perfect for a HTPC and very cool.

Two items left are an optical drive, to play audio CDs and DVDs and another 256MB of memory to bring it up to 512MB. I purchased a generic brand stick of RAM and for some reason I ended up with a DVD burner for the same price as a non-burner. CD/DVD Drive: PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-111D Memory: Generic 256 MB PC3200 DDR

Now for a HTPC to work it needs a HI-FI and a screen. The screen is an 80cm Teac TV which is 4 years old nothing flash but it does have S-Video inputs. It originally was Silver but when it ran out of warranty I sprayed it black so it didn’t stand out so much Television: TEAC CT-M806SV 80CM 4:3 Aspect Ratio, Pal B/G, 50Hz

The HI-FI is old but sometimes newer just isn’t better- Amplifier NEC A-A610 80watts RMS x2 I purchased this amp when I had my very first full-time job, this is a 15 year old amp and has had a pretty hard life and the front cover was broken off long ago. If the quality of an amp can be judged by its weight this must be a good one. NEC haven’t made amps in a very long time a couple of years ago I saw one of these in the local Cash Converters for $200 and now I am kicking myself for not buying it.

There are 2 sets of speakers, the first set I built when I was 20 years old and they originally had all VIFA drivers which cost a small fortune at the time. But along the way one of the midranges was damaged and so both have been replaced with something non-matching. Speaker: Vifa 3 way, 9” woofer The second set is a bit of hybrid they originally where a commercial built speaker but the crossovers tweeter and midrange have been replaced but still contain the original woofer. Many years ago I designed and made stands for these to bring them up off the floor. Speaker 3 way, 12” woofer

There are a few other bits and pieces that make up the stereo Graphic Equalizer: Sherwood 18 band Tuner: Technics ST-2300 Analog AM/FM Turntable: Technics SL-23 Belt Drive Tape: Technics RS-B10S Dolby CD Player: Pioneer PD-S501