metalbabble.com/technobabble

The Basics

You’ll need a computer and a TV. My TV made it easy because it has VGA output. But ideally you could even run HDMI if your PC had it. The machine I used for the job was my old Mac Mini. Not only was it small and unobtrusive, but it has infrared for remote-control and frontrow - apple’s media center software that comes with pretty much every mac now.

Along with this machine I brought along a spacious external hard drive with my music collection, movies, and other stuff. The thing is on all the time and shares it’s filesystem so I can get at it from my laptop.

Oh and if you’re not into Macs, check out Windows Media Center or Myth TV for Windows and Linux respectfully.

Universal Remote

I have a “learning” remote which I can point a remote to it and it learns the commands automatically. This made it very easy to have my Mac respond to my universal remote commands. For example, hit menu for front row, volume, next tracks, arrows, etc. Again I think you’d have to have a learning remote for this to work… but it works PERFECTLY

Keyboard/Mouse - or lack thereof

The last thing I wanted was a wired keyboard and mouse running across the floor. You can get a wireless keyboard and mouse for around $30 at Target, but I was kind of a chump and sprung for the Logitech diNovo edge. It has an integrated touchpad and all the media buttons, plus it’s small and rechargeable. It’s pricey but it’s the best thing out there. They made a smaller version just for this purpose. http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/keyboards/keyboard/devices/192&cl=US,EN

Oh yeah, they make a mac and a pc version… but the pc version is cheaper and works on the mac anyways

Recording Video

You’ll need either a video capture card or a similar usb device if you want to have your media center perform dvr functions. I’m not the person to ask about this because this wasn’t one of my goals with the project - verizon already provides a multi-room dvr so the pc doesn’t worry about this.

Next Steps

This is the fun part, you can set up your machine to behave however you want. See what goodies are available for your platform. I made a “TV” guest login with just the essential icons - web browser, tv listings (widget), games, and links to watching shows on iTunes, Hulu, and other TV stations. I also have all of my games ready to play full screen and on the nice surround sound setup. This part just takes some creativity.

Original posting on metalbabble - circa Dec 2006

This is my CoreDuo Mac mini with all the bells and whistles.

Running

• Mac OS X
• Windows Vista via BootCamp
• FrontRow

Lessons Learned

• Good things come in small packages
• Universal remotes: lazy meets cool meets geeky
• Don’t use album flow in iTunes with 40gigs of music
• BlueTooth isn’t a breakfast cereal character.
• If you’re going to upgrade a Mini’s RAM be prepared: http://metalbabble.com/technobabble/?p=9

Soon I think this computer will be retired to the living room to serve as an overgrown Apple TV.

here’s a quick how-to for installation. It’s kind of an annoying job, but not impossible. Here’s the way it works…

2 gig’s of memory (the intel mac mini takes PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM)

using a putty knife or anything really flat, run along the edge of the case, pressing in the clips and pushing the case and interior apart

pressing the two black plastic clips together, you can slide of the springy airport unit pictured here. i left it attached, the swing it out of the way

i’m not sure what it’s for - but this tiny wire in the front needs to come out. not many “how to” guides tell you about this, but it will need to be taken out

this part is kinda tricky. there’s a huge black plastic housing for the cd rom and hard drive - that whole thing needs to come out. it’s held to the bottom of the computer with 4 tiny scews at each corner. there’s on larger one, so be sure you watch where they come from. if possible, keep the screws in the holes so reassembly will go smoother. otherwise it’s a pain to lay the tiny screws into the hard-to-access holes.

after you’ve unscrewed the four screws you can lift the black housing off. this is where you’d be able to replace the hard drive or optical drive if that was what you were doing. but we’re interested in ram. below is a view of the ram on the board. it is essentially laptop memory. bank 0 is the lower bank 1 is the top. just pry out the metal clips and swing the memory up and out 45 degrees

you’ll notice the black housing with the drives actually plugs into the board almost like a super nes cartridge. use caution with this (well with all of it) get everything back into place, and plug the “mysterious tiny wire” back in - and be SURE to test it out. on my installation i must have not pressed the memory into the board securley because it only recognized 1gig of memory. the “system profiler” will show you the contents of each memory bank so you can assure that they are both functioning. do this before you completely reassemble the computer so you don’t have to do it twice like me!

screw the black housing back in, put the airport unit back on it’s spingy and carefully click the case back onto the computer. and that’s about it!

enjoy the new ram! here’s a few more tips:

* i think mac os x “optimizes” itself for the system it’s installed to. a lower memory system may be optimzed to use more virtual memory rather than ram which now maybe you’d want your system using your memory more for a little extra speed, and relying less on disk virtual memory. in linux i believe this is called “swapiness” i don’t know any way to do this in os x rather than run an installer that “optimizes system performance” but in reality this would be a good opertunity to reinstall a fresh copy of OS X or upgrade to the latest and greatest.

* back up just in case!

* keep the memory in the mac mini paired. in other words, you’ll get more performance by using a 1gig/1gig combo than a 1gig/512mb combo or something. the memory i HAD in there was two 256mb’s paired. now it has two 1gb paired for a total of 2gigs running optimally. when buying memory keep this in mind. the worst you can do is go buy just ONE gb because you’d have to sacrfice 256mb and live with a system that’s running 1.2 gb that is NOT optimized. i’d settle for two 512mb before that! but if you’re spending the money, just max out the machine with 2gb. supposedly that’s the most it’ll ever run.

good luck / be careful / don’t sue me if you break your system