I've a keen interest in computers and like to keep up to date with new products and technologies. Some of the areas I'm interested in include image processing, graphics and anything to do with astronomy. Up until a few years ago when I was on CompuServe, I was a WUGNET technical associate on the FCLASS (Foundation classes) forum on CompuServe. Now I can be found quite often in the MFC USENET groups or Code Project forums helping out anyone with their MFC problems. In April 2007, I was made an MVP by MS in the area of Windows SDK.
My Main Development Workstation "CORE_I7" (Purchased from Komplett.ie and Dell.ie in May 2009)
| An Intel Core i7 Quad Extreme Processor. This is the top of the range Core i7-965 processor running at 3.2GHz with 4 cores and 8 threads. I also used a Zalman CNP9900 LED CPU Cooler. The whole blue glow from the various fans inside the case is very cool looking thro the clear side window in the case. |
| An Asus P6T6 WS Revolution Workstation Motherboard |
| 6 sticks of 2GB Corsair XMS3 DDR 1600Mhz 2PC3200 memory. This provides a total of 12GB of main memory and can take advantage of the triple channel memory support of the X58 motherboard. |
| 2 Western Digital VelociRaptor 10000RPM 300GB SATA drives in a RAID0 array giving, this gives a really fast setup for my boot partition. |
| 1 Western Digital Caviar 2TB SATA2 drive as a "data" drive |
| Two Gainward GeForce GTX 580 1536MB graphics cards. These were purchased from dabs.ie in July 2011 as an upgrade from the original GeForce 295 graphics card when I originally purchased the computer. |
| Gigabyte 3D Mars Silver Big Tower Case |
| Corsair 1000 Watt Power supply |
| The OS installed is Windows 7 Ultimate x64. |
| LG DVD_RW Blue-Ray & HD-DVD Drive. |
| 4 Monitors in total: Two DELL 30" 3008WFP LCD monitors hanging off the primary graphics card, a DELL 30" WFPHC LCD and a 24" ASUS VG236 3D LCD Monitor (for the odd bit of 3D gaming with an NVIDIA GeForce 3D Vision setup!) hanging off the second graphics card. The 3D Monitor was an upgrade to the system from Overclockers.co.uk in November 2010. This provides a lovely multi monitor solution with a total desktop width of 9600 pixels by 1600 pixels max vertically. |
This machine is a pretty high end rig and should serve my very well for development purposes going forward. With the amount of memory onboard it should be easily able to handle a number of simultaneous virtual machines which is always handy for testing purposes. Since installing Windows 7 on it, I must admit that MS really has got it right after the whole Vista debacle. Everything just fits together nicely and performance is very good. The only thing I still pine for is the XP style Classic Start menu which has been completely removed from Windows 7. With the new Pin to TaskBar functionality and such large monitors I rarely ever use the start menu anyway now, instead preferring to use the taskbar shortcuts directly for my most used programs. UAC on 7 seems to be much more toned down than Vista which helps to make you day to day experience a whole lot more pleasant. The Virtual Windows XP in Windows 7 is a really great feature and has already helped me to keep my old Desktop printer going as well as being able to use the Cisco VPN client which is only available for x86 versions of Windows. I've also run a few games on the new PC to give it a good try out. I've tried Crysis, Racedriver Grid and Far Cry 2 and the visuals in these games are absolutely stunning. PC gaming technology has really progressed in the last few years. I would also like to thank my accounts manager at Komplett, namely Rafal Cyranski for their great service.
My Secondary Development Workstation "JUPITER" (Purchased from Komplett.ie in October 2005)
| 2 AMD Opteron 280 CPU's. That's 4 real CPU cores in the one PC!. 2 Dual core/Quad core CPU's is the maximum which Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server Standard edition support without getting into the enterprise versions of Windows |
| MSI K8N Master2-Far Dual Opteron Motherboard |
| 4 sticks of Corsair PC3200 1024 MB CAS2.5 ECC DIMMs. This provides a total of 4GB of main memory which is the maximum which Windows XP 32bit edition supports |
| 2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB SATA2 NCQ hard disks. Configured in a RAID0 array, this gives just under 1 TB of super fast disk space |
| Gainward GeForce 7800GTX 256MB "U/3500PCX" Graphics card |
| Black/Silver Cooler Master Stacker Case |
| 550W Fortron/Source ATX Power supply |
| Windows XP Professional + Service Pack 3. I also have Vista Ultimate, Windows XP 64 bit edition and Windows ME set up as virtual machines using VMware Server for testing my code on. |
| Black NEC ND-3540A DVD±/RW burner |
| A standard Black 3.5" Sony Floppy Drive. |
| Microsoft Wireless Optional Desktop 3 Keyboard and Mouse combo |
| Creative Labs X-Fi Elite Pro PCI Sound card from Overclockers.co.uk |
| A Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speaker system |
| 24" ASUS VG236 3D LCD Monitor |
| An LG GGC-H20L Combined Blue-Ray / HD-DVD SATA Drive. This drive allows you to play HD-DVD and Blue-Ray discs on your PC. I have a bunch of HD-DVD discs including Planet Earth from the BBC and they all work fine. I'm awaiting a bunch of Blue-Ray discs from Amazon to try out. Before getting this internal drive, I had an external Xbox 360 HD-DVD Drive. I use Cyber PowerDVD Ultra in conjunction with SlySoft AnyDVD HD. You can also install a UDF 2.5 device driver from Toshiba which allows you to explore the contents of the discs using Windows Explorer. This is required because Windows XP unlike Windows Vista does not include a UDF v2.5 device driver out of the box. UDF v2.5 is the file system used by HD-DVD and Blue-Ray discs. A long thread on hooking the Xbox 360 drive up to a PC can be found at http://www.uneasysilence.com/archive/2006/11/8303/. |
My Laptop "MERCURY" (Purchased from Adorama Camera through Amazon.com in October 2010)
| ASUS G73JW-A1 Republic Of Gamers Laptop with a 17.3" Screen, An Intel Core i7-740QM Quad-core processor, 2 * 500GB HDDs, 8GB memory and Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit). It includes USB 3, A Blu-Ray drive, the usual WiFi, Bluetooth and SD Readers, a 2.0 megapixel webcam and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M graphics card. It's a lot bigger and heavier that my previous Toshiba laptop but with a Full HD screen resolution of 1920 x 1080, it means that it is very easy to use the likes of Visual Studio on it compared to laptops with smaller screen resolutions. Performance is great and I've got VC 2005, 2008 & 2010 on it for all my on site development needs. |
My Server Machine "VEGA" (Purchased from Komplett.ie in August 2007)
| Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 2.2Ghz CPU |
| Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R Motherboard |
| 2GB of Corsair PC5300 DDR memory |
| Samsung SH-S182D DVD+/-RW burner |
| Antec Performance One P150 Miditower case |
| 1 750 GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 SATA2 hard disk as the boot drive |
| 1 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green SATA2 hard disk as a internal data drive |
| A 2 Drive ICY BOX RAID Storage Enclosure with 2 * 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green SATA2 hard disks connected via eSATA |
| Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard x64 Edition |
This machine serves as my main network server and runs DHCP for my network. It also supports my primary backup for my network with just over 6 TB of hard disk space available. The machine runs the 64 bit version of Windows Server 2003. I also run SourceSafe on this machine to serve as the main version control system for all of my code. The computer is whisper quiet and includes a number of features aimed at noise reduction including the novel approach of reducing sound by using elasticated straps to mount your hard disks with. This helps avoid transferring any sound from the operation of the hard disks to the actual case. It also has lots of room for expansion including 6 SATA adapters and an eSATA connector. The Core2 Duo CPU operates very well and I'll probably change my allegiance back to Intel for my next PC purchase for my main development work.
My Second Server Machine "NEPTUNE" (Purchased from Overclockers.co.uk in October 2010)
| A "Primo Crystal" AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1055T 95W Edition 2.8Ghz CPU |
| Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2h Motherboard |
| 4GB of Corsair PC3-12800C9 1600 Mhz DDR3 memory |
| Samsung SH-B123L/RSBP 12x BD-ROM / 16x DVD Writer Drive |
| Xigmatek Asgard Black case |
| 1 Seagate Baracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA2 hard disk as the boot drive |
| 4 * 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green SATA2 hard disks setup as a single Windows "Striped Volume" |
| Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard |
This machine serves as my secondary network backup with just over 8.5 TB of hard disk space available. The machine runs Windows Server 2008 R2. It currently operates as a simple secondary backup to "VEGA" but I will start migrating over some of the roles of "VEGA" to "NEPTUNE" such as DHCP and SourceSafe. With 5 hard disks installed in this computer and only 5 SATA connectors on the motherboard, when I got Windows installed on, I disconnected the Blu-Ray drive included and connected up the final data hard disk instead (The machine came preconfigured with 4 hard disks and the Blu-Ray drive). I would have liked to setup the 4 Western Digital hard disks as a standard RAID 0 array, but the Windows 2008 install had already installed a 100 MB "System Reserved" partition on the first of the data drives. A bit of googling seem to suggest that the only way to ensure this was created on the boot drive was to ensure no other hard disks were connected at install time. The advice was to reinstall Windows!. I decided I could live with this annoyance and just decided to use the built in Windows stripping support instead to create one large stripped volume on the remaining space on the all the data drives.
My main NAS Device "DiskStation" (Purchased from dabs.ie in January 2011)
| A Synology DS1511+ NAS Server |
| 5 * 3TB Hitachi Deskstar 7200 TPM SATA2 hard disk |
In the ever ongoing quest for more hard disk space, I have splashed out for a NAS device. The issue with a normal PC as a file server is that PCs normally use quite a bit of electricity compared to a dedicated NAS device. I spent some time researching the NAS market and finally plumped for this device. I purchased 5 3TB hard disks from Hitachi for it which although they are not on the official Synology hardware compatibility list for the 1511+ has been used by a number of users as reported on their forums. I'm sure it is just a matter of them getting around to testing the Hitachi hard disks. The device itself supports hot swappable drives and it is really easy installing the drives in the drive cage which gets inserted into the device. When configured as a Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) volume, the total usable space available is 10.73 TB. As of 16 January, I already have it 25% full. All the administration of the device is through a web interface called "DiskStation Manager 3.0". It presents a user interface which is very familiar to your client desktop computer interface. I'd have to say that it is stunningly implemented. Its got a load of extras such as a download manager, resource monitor and surveillance software which supports many types of IP cameras. All works perfectly. If you are in the market for a NAS, then I would definitely suggest you give Synology a look. I use a piece of commercial software called ViceVersa Pro which provides numerous file synchronisation strategies to backup my main client computer and servers to each other.
My HTPC Machine "VENUS" (Purchased from Komplett.ie in February 2006)
| Origen X11 Case. This case looks a lot different that your bog standard ATX computer case. It looks great in your Den/Living Room and also includes a VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display), which I have still to play around with. |
| A NorthQ 4775-400 PSU. I would have liked a quieter PSU, buts its not too bad and is much quieter than my Opteron Workstation's PSU. |
| AMD Athlon 64 3700+ CPU. Not the most powerful CPU, but then you do not really need much horse power for a HTPC. |
| ASUS A8N-SLI MB. This MB is passively cooled which helps keep the noise down. This is unlike a lot of other recent motherboards which use a small fan on the chipset to keep things cool. When building your own HTPC you should be on the lookout for issues such as this. It also includes built-in coaxial and optical digital audio outputs meaning that you do not require a separate sound card for good quality sound output. With these outputs I was able to hook up the HTPC to get Dolby Digital 5.1 sound when playing DVD's from within Media Center from either the DVD drive or from my home network. The audio from my STB is taken from its' standard red and white phono connectors to the 3 1/2 MM stereo input socket on the back of the MB. |
| 2 sticks of 512MB TwinMOS DDR memory. Not the fastest memory around but again not that important for a HTPC. Because there is 2 sticks installed, the MB can use it in a dual channel configuration. |
| 250GB Samsung SpinPoint SATA2 hard disk. Should keep me recording TV programs for a few months before I run out of space and need to purchase another HDD!. Again because MCE is a standard PC, there is no problems in doing this. |
| Gigabyte 6600 GeForce Silent Pipe PCI-E Graphics card. Again this is passively cooled which helps to keep the decibels down. It includes a breakout box which provides S-Video out (along with composite which I do not use) which I've hooked up to my TV. It is important when building a MCE machine that the graphics card has native DirectX 9 support as MCE uses a lot of DirectX features to provide the nice UI which it has. You can obtain the latest Forceware MCE drivers from NVIDIA. The NVIDIA drivers also provide good control over configuring the TV Out features of the card which is really important in a HTPC setup. |
| Sapphire Theatrix Theater 550 PCI TV Tuner card. Before making the purchase I did some research on TV tuner cards as I have used a fair share of them before and was never very happy with their stability. This card has had many favourable reviews and comes in PCI or PCI-E variants. Its drivers are actively updated and directly support MCE. It includes the usual TV connector but I've hooked the STB up via the card's S-Video input. The S-Video input again comes on a breakout box which also provides composite inputs. This breakout box initially confused me as I used this breakout box on the Graphics card and could get no output on my TV. Eventually I realized I was using the wrong breakout box. Swapping them around soon fixed this problem. This card also includes a FM radio which MCE can take advantage of. |
| Black NEC ND-3550A DVD±/RW burner. As is standard these days, this DVD drive uses region locked firmware (a so called RPC2 Drive) but with a little hunting on the web its pretty easy to find some modded firmware to make the drive region free. |
| A standard Black 3.5" Sony Floppy Drive. I do plan on ripping this out at some stage and replacing it with a 3 1/2" AC Ryan Card reader. This way you can simply drop down the panel on the X11 case and insert you card media from your digital camera. MCE will I believe pick this up and offer to view the images on your media. |
| A Microsoft MCE keyboard and remote. These provide the final touches for the HTPC. They're both well designed and integrate with MCE in a seamless fashion. The remote comes with 2 little cables which you attach to the IR receiver which you plug into a USB port on the MCE box. On the other end of these cables is a small IR head with some sticky back plastic which you attach to your STB. These cables allow MCE to switch the channels on your STB. One thing which did stump me when setting this up, is where to stick the cable on the Sky+ / Sky HD. Normally it is obvious where the IR receiver is located on a piece of AV gear, but not so on this STB. After a lot of hair pulling and messing about, it turns out that the IR receiver is built into the red record button which is in the middle of the "6" which is part of the "160" logo on the front of this STB. Another thing to note is that there are two sockets for the IR blaster cables and if you are using only one STB with MCE, then you should plug the cable into the port named "1". With everything setup correctly, when you change the channel using the MCE remote, you should see the tip of the IR blaster cable flashing a short while later following by the STB changing channel. Hopefully this description will help out any other MCE first timers especially those in the UK or RoI (Republic of Ireland) with Sky/Sky+. |
| Samsung 17" Syncmaster 730BF LCD. This monitor along with a bog standard wired keyboard and mouse attached to the HTPC allows you to use the regular XP UI when required. |
| NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder. If you are building your own HTPC then you will need to purchase some additional software which provides the DVD/MPEG2 decoding functionality. This is not included in XP/MCE out of the box and is required to operate the TV features of MCE. Without it you will get various errors in the Media Center software. There is other decoder software out there but if you already have a GeForce graphics card in your HTPC, then it makes sense to go with PureVideo as it offloads a lot of the heavy processing to your graphics card. |
|
Windows XP
Media Centre Edition 2005 aka MCE. What a great piece of software. I
have used other TV software such as Showshifter and BeyondTV on different PCs
in the past to record shows from TV, but
the whole end user experience in MCE is brilliant. The quality of the TV
recordings from the TV tuner card is superb. The EPG (Electronic Program
Guide) data is surprisingly complete even for RoI users. The integration of
the EPG data with the TV functionality is superb and all the information
from the Guide is carried across to your recordings. The "My Pictures"
functionality is superb allowing you to generate slide shows of all your
images from your home network. You can even listen to the Radio while the
slide show is running. Because MCE "is" Windows plus some additional software, you can use any software which is already available for XP. This means that you can easily install additional codecs such as DivX and they will play without issue in "My Videos" in Media Centre. The "My Music" functionality builds on Windows Media Player meaning that if you already use this software to manage your music collection, then all the hard work is done. Just point MCE to your collection and MCE will handle it. Most of the features in Windows Media Player such as categorization, visualisations, play lists, album art etc are all there in MCE. All the usual functionality you would expect from a DVD player is there also. It even supports playing DVDs from the network. If you have all your DVD's backed up on your home network, then you know how much of a joy it is to not have to eject the DVD drive to watch another DVD!. Two other nice features in Media Centre are integration of Windows Messenger and Caller ID. If you have the MCE keyboard then you can hold an online chat with your buddies on your TV!. If a phone call comes in and your HTPC has a modem installed and connected up to your phone line, it will display the Caller ID details of the call. That way you can decide whether or not to take the call before you get up from the sofa!. There is an active development community out there writing plug-ins for MCE, to extend the functionality to include things such a POP3 and Hotmail email readers, Internet Radio, Google Maps, Games etc etc. If I get the time, I may take a look at the MCE SDK to see what I can do in this area. At the moment, it is quite like the Pocket PC development community where a lot of small development shops are plugging the gaps of the base product. It really is a great piece of software and with the right supporting hardware, you end up with a great end user experience. |
My Internet Connection (Installed September 2007)
| My primary Internet Connection is a 3 Mbps downstream / 512 Kbps upstream "Business Starter" grade Wireless connection from Alpha Broadband. This was installed in September 2007 after I canvassed the local area for interest in getting a local access point setup. It's a really reliable service and I would have no problem recommending them for new customers. Providing the firewalling and NAT'ing for this connection is a Linksys RV042 Router. For more information on this, please see my blog entry at http://naughter.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7692E6D72E26EAC!221.entry |
| As a backup to the primary connection, I have a 2Mbps downstream / 128Kbps upstream DSL connection from Eircom. I had to get a new phone line installed to get the broadband as my old phone line was a split line and was unsuitable for broadband. Initially the new line passed the 2Mbps speed test but it could never connect at this speed. For the first couple of months it could connect at 1Mbps, but since May 2007, it was failing to connect reliably at this speed. After taking to Eircom tech support, we have reduced the connection speed to 512Kbps and it now works pretty reliably. This seems to be the most reliable speed I can get as I am 5.1 KM from the local exchange. The router which was supplied with the package is a Netopia 2247. Prior to February 2007, I had a Satellite connection via Educom which provides DirecPC access here in Ireland. The connection I was getting via the satellite connection was nominally 640 Kbps downstream and 128 Kbps upstream. |
My Old Development Machine (now cleaned down and given to a friend as a gift) (build August 2001, rebuilt December 2002)
| AMD Athlon XP 2700+ "Thoroughbred" 333FSB CPU |
| ASUS A7V8X Motherboard |
| A Zalman Flower CNPS-6000 CPU Cooler |
| 512 MB of Corsair DDR XMS3500 CAS2 Main Memory |
| The OS is Windows XP Professional + Service Pack 2 |
| 128 MB Hercules 3D Prophet Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card |
| A 20.1" Viewsonic VP201s LCD Monitor (1600 * 1200 * 32) |
| 120 GB UDMA/100 Western Digital Cavier Special Edition IDE Hard disk as Primary |
| 250 GB UDMA/100 Western Digital Cavier Special Edition IDE Hard disk as Secondary |
| A Pioneer DVD-106 16 speed DVD-Rom drive (Region Free) |
| A LiteOn DVR-RW SOHW 1633S DVR RW Drive |
| A Hauppauge WinTV Theatre TV Tuner and Radio Card |
| A Microsoft Internet Pro Keyboard |
| A Creative Labs Audigy 2 Platinum Sound card |
| A Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer USB mouse |
This machine was assembled by myself with the components purchased from Overclockers.co.uk and Creative Labs Online store.
Other Peripherals
| A Hewlett Packard Color LaserJet CP2025dn printer |
| A D-Link DGX-1024D 24 port Gigabit Switch |
| A Canon CanoScan Lide 200 USB Scanner |
| An Apple 32GB Black iPhone 4 |
| An Apple 3G 64GB iPad 2 |
| Two ASUS O!Play HDP-R3 Network Streaming devices. One hooked up via HDMI to my bedroom LCD TV and one to my main TV. These devices allows me to stream all my videos and music located on my server machine to my TV. It supports pretty much all the video files I could throw at it including DivX, MKV, raw DVD images, AVI, MPEG-2, BluRay files and DRM free WMV files. On the audio side, it supports MP3, WAV and DRM free wma files. It also supports various internet add-ons such as Youtube, Flickr, RSS feeds and Internet radio streams. The UI of the device is pretty nice and the firmware is being constantly updated. All in all, a very nice convergence device. |
Development tools I use
| Visual Studio 2008 with SP1 and Visual Studio 2010: My main two development tools. Both have numerous improvements over earlier versions which should help many MFC developers, but personally I still prefer 2008. I also have VC 1.5, VC 5, VC 6 & Visual Studio .NET 2002, Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005 installed. I am slowly migrating all of my open source code to require at least VC 2005 instead of VC 6 where it makes sense. Some of my code still compiles with VC 6 but I will be concentrating on VC 2005+ going forward from Q1 2008. |
| Visual SourceSafe 2005: A version control system is an absolutely essential tool once you have multiple developers or versions of software floating around. |
| The MSDN: To keep up to date with all the info pouring out of MS, it is essential to have this installed. Lately though Integrated help in the Visual Studio products has been going downhill and it is just as easy (and as fast!) to Google for the answer or use MSDN Online. |
| The Windows SDK (Aka Platform SDK): This needs to be installed if you want to have the latest SDK header files (especially with Visual C++ 6). Essential if you want that latest UI look and features. Note that a lot of my code will fail to compile if you do not have this installed. Please note that the last version of the Platform SDK which works with VC 6 is February 2003 and is no longer available online from MS. You now need to order a CD version of it from MS. |
| MicroAngelo: Great little icon browser and editor. |