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Akimbo PC.

redrouteone

Well-known member
Akimbo was an IP TV service that folded back in 2007. When they folded they gave me back the money for the set top box and told me to do what ever I want with it.

I decided to replace my HTPC with something more energy efficient. So I picked up an Intel mini-itx board with a dual core Atom processor.

Spec are Atom 330 1.6GHz dual core

2 GB Ram

160GB 2.5" Hard drive.

I used the old hard drive from my MacBook Pro and the power supply was left over from a project several years back. So the price tag was $135. Not too shabby.



Guts of the old Akimbo box. Motherboard with integrated power supply and 80GB Hard drive



Case with guts removed. Hard drive bracket still installed.



Power Supply. Bog standard Micro-ATX. I think 230W. It was purchased for testing of my senior project in college. So not many hours on it.



Intel D945GCLF2 Mother board. It has Dual core 1.6GHz Atom 330 processor. It is mini-itx form factor



Guts of the power supply.



Different picture of the power supply guts



Hole I cut in the case for the I/O back plate. I used a nibbler tool to cut it out. The case steel was thin and pretty soft so it was easy to cut.



Close up of the hole. Not bad for free hand.



Had to remove one of the stand offs because it was in the wrong place. I just used a Lenox 7/8" hole saw and it went through it like butter



Hole saw in my drill. At little close to the edge of the table.



My Lenox hole saw set. First time I've used them. I picked them up at Lowes for $25 on clearance. Normal price was $90 so it was good of a deal to pass up.



After cleaning up the I/O cut out with the dremel tool.



I had to add some more stand offs for the motherboard and power supply. I used the dremel tool to cut off the excess from the brass stand offs. I used standard stands from a PC case.



Power supply and hard drive mounted. To mount the hard drive I used the bottom half of an old external drive case and secured it to an existing stand off in the case.



Motherboard mounted and connected



This is the front panel board from the akimbo. Unfortunately the power switch is not broke out to the connector. So I soldered the power switch lead from an old PC case. I used some electrical tape to form a strain relief.



Close up of the switch. On the right hand side you can see the PIC microcontroller used to drive the panel. In the future I may see if I can interface too it in order to use the other buttons and LEDs



Picture with the front panel reinstalled. You can also see where I bypassed the power supply voltage selection switch.



Front all buttoned up.



Rear all closed up. I plan to pick up some silver tape to close up the unused holes.

 

redrouteone

Well-known member
Yeah I've been wanting to build a Mini-ITX system for years.

They have finally gotten powerful enough that I can actually replace one of my larger systems with one.

I really enjoyed this build. I might just build another one.

 

Bunsen

Admin-Witchfinder-General
That's rather neatly done. You should consider submitting that to mini-itx.com

 

redrouteone

Well-known member
I loaded Fedora 12 Linux on the system and attached it my HDTV.

I have a Samsung 720p DLP set, which means I had to compensate for overscan. Figured this might be useful for overs in the future so I'll include the relevant xorg.conf info, so google will find it.

Section "Monitor"

Identifier "Monitor0"

ModelName "Samsung DLP 50 720p"

HorizSync 31.5 - 48.0

VertRefresh 56.0 - 65.0

Option "dpms"

ModeLine "720p-overscan" 74.25 1190 1304 1356 1650 665 702 708 750

EndSection

I used xvidtune to help generate the ModeLine numbers.

I also discovered that the motherboard had a S/PDIF header. I went down to this morning and purchased a panel mount RCA jack. I built the harness and installed in the factory Digital Coax hole in the case. So the factory labeling is correct. I wish I had kept the mother board, because I could have also used the TOSLINK connector to have optical audio output.

I connected it up to my Denon receiver and it works great.

I watch some youtube videos and the system is working great. Though HD Flash videos can get a little choppy. Then again flash sucks. The D2A converter in my Denon receiver is much better than any on board sound card will have. So the improved audio quality is an added bonus.

My old HTPC was a 2.8GHz Pentium D, so this system is much quitter and uses less power. Overall I feel it was is good upgrade.

 
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