Blackbox Project

[coius]

No, not the airline recorder. I Finally got all the parts to build my Pentium 4 Based "BlackBox" project. Thanks to a gift certificate I got in trade to working on a friend's machine, I finally got a decent case for the board and the rest of the stuff.

I picked up a black and silver case (really flimsy, but it works :-/ ) That is the housing for it. I gotta do some work on it, despite it being new, not everything fits right (Damn chinese manufacturing processes) and I got most of the parts. The others my friends have. but this is the setup:

Pentium IV 2.8Ghz w/ HT. 800Mhz FSB

DDR2 PC-5300 RAM. (1GB). Interleaved

GeForce 6200 256MB DDR2 AGP 8x

Intel 946 Chipset.

40GB EIDE HDD (will upgrade to SATA 1.5 120GB

No optical drive as of yet. Borrowed DVD-+RW from main pc

530Watt PSU with Dual Rails.

5 PCI Slots

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Running XP Pro right now

I doubt I will put Vista on it, although it's a posibility and I have an extra license. This machine will be used as either a media server for the house, and/or a gaming system

 

[benjgvps]

What motherboard do you have?

 

[coius]

I have no idea. I would have to look at it. I know it uses a 946 Chipset, but it appears to be a Dell Board previously. The nice thing is that it was from one of their workstation systems (XPS?!?!) and There isn't much markings on it. I will get a look at it tomorrow. I am getting a harddrive setup for Linux (Ubuntu) to play with it. I would put OSx86 on it, but pretty much nothing in it is supported, I mean by Graphics card (this particular one is known not to work) and a few others like the sound card. So I doubt I will be putting OS X on it. Although, it would be nice...

 

[coius]

This is the case I used for it

It's a pretty cheap case, but I wasn't going to spend too much, since most of the stuff I got (video card, Case, Mutlimedia Bay reader) was on gift certificate. I bought a DVD Burner from newegg for $21 shipped. So it's gonna be fine for what I am going to use it for. The box is pretty cheap and the case shows it. Really flexible, and the drive bays are "Loose" meaning you have to position the drives just right and hunker it down pretty tight to keep from slipage. Other than that, if you take care of it, it will be a fine case. It should keep for me, since I am careful with my computers and treat them like my babies. This should last me for a while.

 

[coius]

I went ahead and bought a DVD Burner for it (Non-DL, but I don't use DL discs anyways) for $21 shipped from newegg (with free 3-day shipping).

It's a Lite-On DVD Burner. We shall see how it comes out

pics:

Front of the BlackBox project

Back of the machine

First pic of the inside (guts) of the machine

Second picture of the inside (guts) of the machine

Sorry for the crappy pics. I got an old(er) camera that doesn't like close-up pics. But that's all I can get without being too blurry

 

[techfury90]

Turn on macro mode. It'll look like a tulip (the button for it). It makes close ups WAY better.