[Wolves] very small mythbox

[Andrew Lewis]

Evenin all!

There was some talk at the last meeting about making small frontends for 
mythtv - I decided to have a bit of an experiment (hardware wise). The 
story goes:

1) Using a morex cubid case (WxDxH 210mm x 258mm x 65mm), you can start 
with the micro-itx board of your choice.
2) Add a laptop hdd and some memory.
3) You now have a working system, piff paff puff.

This is all very well, but we were talking of telly cards and wireless 
at the meeting. The morex cubid case doesn't let you add a card as 
standard, but with a bit of techie glue and several precise tools, all 
can be well.

First off, you need to cut a bracket in half and move the hdd. Not a big 
deal because it's soft metal and you can almost tear it by hand. this 
makes space over the board. now put the hdd on your new modified 
bracket, leaving the space over your motherboard completely empty. ta-daa!!

Add a pci riser which rotates the pci slot 90 degrees over the board.

If you're fitting a telly card (I just did this) - remove the metal 
bracket from the back of the card, desolder all of the sockets on the 
back and solder jumper wires onto it. This is NOT hard. It only takes 
about 20 mins to do with a soldering iron, and you're not soldering 
anywhere near the important components, so you don't have to worry much.

This solder-job might not be hard, but it is big, and it is clever, 
because it means your telly card will now fit inside the case. Lovely 
Jubbly.

Drill a few holes in the back of the case, and fit some sockets to 
accept your telly signal into. Easy Peasy, Furry Muff.

Fire it up, and install the OS of your choice.

Want Wireless? USB wireless dongle - £18, Cheap as chips!

Total time to complete: Less than 2 hours, including building the 
computer from bits and all the hacking.

:) Spline