DIY: 200 Dollar PC, Part 2
My recent article, DIY: 200 Dollar PC, proved to be quite popular with over 50k pageviews in the last few days. The Intel D201GLY2 motherboard that I linked to in the last article drove so much traffic to Newegg that the item has since been “deactivated” and gone out-of-stock indefinitely. Taking that subtle hint, I will be writing follow-up posts documenting my experience with this computer, software I configure and so on. I guess people rather enjoy finding out about affordable and useful hardware.
As you might have expected, I deviated from my original $200 plan for my own needs with this box. I will end up using this as file server for my local network so I bought a 750GB Seagate Barracuda from a B&M Fry’s Electronics store for $159. To keep the software setup simple and avoid partitioning, I will be using a Western Digital Raptor hard drive (was lying around at home from an old RAID setup) for the Ubuntu Linux operating system.
For the case, I purchased the APEX MI-100 case mentioned in the first article but I quickly changed my mind and decided to build my own case. That and the MI-100 has a loud power supply. However, I was able to salvage the motherboard tray (always handy when building your own case) and the power switch. I have a 120 Watt PicoPSU power supply on the way, so this thing will be just about silent except for hard drive noise (as with most 10k+ RPM drives, the Raptor whines) when I’m done.
The case will be constructed with a few layers of 1/4-inch thick acrylic/plexiglass. That is, one layer will have the motherboard, and another layer the 2 hard drives. Layers will be separated with 3/8-inch aluminum tubing and fastened with #8-32 threads and bolts. It might end up looking something like a cube.
First Impressions
Temporary setup whilst installing the OS.
When I got the parts earlier this week I hastily set it up to install Ubuntu and get a feel for the machine. The Ubuntu install went well and didn’t take more than 20-25 minutes. The 1.2GHz processor is enough for using the computer as an Internet client with apps like Thunderbird, Firefox, Pidgin and so on working flawlessly with the amount of available horsepower. I was able to play movies in their original size (DivX movie used about 60% CPU in VLC Player), but playing them in full screen mode instantly started dropping frames.
Another thing to note is that the northbridge chip gets a little toasty so you can either have a 40mm fan directly on top of it or better yet just a slow 80mm or larger fan blowing across the motherboard. It doesn’t have to be fast, just a slight breeze will do. Otherwise, the Zalman ZM-NB32 passive northbridge heatsink has worked well for me in the past.
Video Hacks
That brings me to my only issue with this board - video. The SiS 964 has horrible Linux support. Upon first install, there will be lots of apparent signal noise and things will appear very distorted on the screen. The default SiS module in Xorg doesn’t play nicely. To get around that I lowered the screen resolution so I could at least see what was going on (the lower the resolution, the less distorted the picture was). The easy workaround is to just tell Xorg to use the VESA module by running
and selecting the default responses for everything else. Doing so reconfigures Xorg to use the VESA driver for generic video cards. However, this approach utilizes none of the hardware acceleration supported by the SiS chip, thus resulting in poor glxgears numbers. It works alright for regular 2D stuff but even things like scrolling in a browser are slow.
Fortunately, Sergey Kiselev posted his modified SiS Xorg module and xorg.conf file online. Installing those can be done simply with (assuming Sergey’s sis_drv.so module is on your desktop):
sudo mv sis_drv.so sis_drv.bak
sudo mv ~/Desktop/sis_drv.so sis_drv.so
Then I edited xorg.conf (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) to add lines from Sergey’s xorg.conf that mine didn’t have. For me this included the Files and Module sections as well as the following lines within the Device section:
Option "XvDefaultAdaptor" "Blitter"
This hack allowed me to get the computer to run 1680×1050 resolution but I was not able to get it to run the native 1920×1200 resolution my monitor supports. I’m still tinkering with that.
The Next Step
Once I get the case all figured out, the next step will be configuring Samba to share the 750GB drive on the network. Samba lets you share files, folders, drives and printers, and lets you control the permissions each user has with those resources. It’s a much better solution than trying to share an NTFS-formatted drive on Linux.
Additionally, it is always a good idea to format the drive you’re going to be sharing with a file system that’s easy to work with on the host OS. NTFS in Linux is still a work in progress for the most part, so I will likely be using xfs as it works better with the types of larger files I will be sharing.
Going with Linux for this computer is definitely the harder way. Had I chose to use Windows XP I wouldn’t have any video issues as SiS has working Windows drivers and all I would have to do is share a folder or install an FTP server program. Where’s the fun in that though?
Thanks to Aron Schatz at ASE Labs for pointing me to Sergey Kiselev’s Xorg modules.
Thoughts? What do you think so far?
One More Thing
You can tweak OS X Leopard’s Time Machine app into working with NAS Samba shares, doubling the utility of this cheap computer.
Run this in Leopard’s terminal to get Time Machine to recognize “unsupported network volumes”.
Maybe I should have titled this post DIY: Time Capsule.. more on that later after I test it out myself.
Your PCI slot is empty right? Why don’t you install a cheap linux-supported graphic card? I think that would make it a perfect small PC…
Glad to hear you decided to go with the picoPSU as I had originally suggested. Cutting one less fan out of the issue and saving yourself a few cubic inches greatly helps with the case building. Soldering the HDD and fan leads directly to the PSU mobo will also trim up slack in the system, resulting in a cleaner build. Now we just need to get you to overclock that poor Celeron, it’s got Conroe heritage after all.
@Timothy - I’m leaving that for a last resort. :-)
awesome, you really know how to drive viewers to your website. Another good article about your DIY fun.
Just curious, how do you know the APEX MI-100’s power supply is loud? I saw no mention of that in Newegg reviews, so I’m just wondering where you’re seeing that.
I ordered the APEX MI-100 and a BLKD201GLYL (model slightly under your board, since your board was sold out), and I’m hoping for a quiet build. I’ll know more on Monday.
By the way, have you tried FreeNAS? That’s what I use for my file server and I see that as much better solution than Ubuntu if you just want to share files. It supports a crazy amount of protocols, including AFP, so doing a fake Time Capsule is easy.
Nice….I’m definitely going to try this soon as I can. I’m planning on buying a macbook, and this PC is 5 years old, so I’ll salvage as much of it is I can. It
If you can somehow add 802.11n, this would be an awesome DIY competitor for Time Capsule. A backup APPLIANCE. :)
Hey, if you’re just going to use this as a file server, you may consider not installing X at all. (That’s what I did for my file server.) Also, I suggest ext2 as the file system. It’s the most widely used linux file system and supports any size file you could use on that size drive. (And seems to be working fine on my 1.6TB partition)
@Ronald - FreeNAS is FreeBSD based if I remember correctly. It would probably be even harder to get the graphics working on that board. Although I think it had a way to install itself to a USB stick so you could use all the drive slots for hard drives and not waste any space for the OS. (I could never quite get that working, but it was at least a year ago now) Also, ubuntu can do anything FreeNAS can, it’s just all preconfigured with that distro.
Hey, where are the DIY case pictures? In the DIY computer stakes I’m definitely a sucker for groovy cases. :)
I love getting the info of new posts through twitter- I feel very in the loop.
Looking forward to part 3! :D
This is good stuff. All a good reference for when I get around to building my own rig…eventually.
Congrats on the success of the DIY series. :-)
@Ron - because I bought it.
@titanium_geek - hasn’t been built yet
@timothy - it would be easy to add a Wi-Fi card but it is a bad idea to have the backup appliance unwired as backups will be rather long.
heh using my post from part one to part solve the graphics issue and no reference :P
Good to see you actually building this. Was this always intended or were you pushed by the popularity of the first post?
heh using my post from part one to part solve the graphics issue and no reference :P
Good to see you actually building this. Was this always intended or were you pushed by the popularity of the first post?
@David - Isn’t dpkg-reconfigure common unix knowledge, been using it for years…
@stammy - Didn’t think of that. Makes sense. :)
@Paul it is, i was just messing.
A DIY time capsule sounds good, particularly as we have to pay an additional $99 (approx.) in the UK for the same product.
Question is, can you make the case look as pretty? ;)
Great follow up, Paul! I look forward to seeing how you case it up. (You should spray paint your logo on it or something…)
Great write-up. I want to setup a home NAS device, and this might just be the ticket…
@Mike: I don’t think graphics should be an issue with FreeNAS. You only need a monitor for about a 5 minute setup process; from there everything can and needs to be done from the web interface.
Besides, I’m seeing good mentions of this board on the FreeNAS forums, so it looks like no one is really having any display issues.
Well done paul!! I’m using my HTPC as a network server too, but under windows, and ftp + vnc. It’s fine for me, don’t need much more then this right now.
Nice post. If I had a Macbook, I would definitely build one to make a Time Capsule, but I prefer the speed of Firewire800.
Why spend the time building or buying a case at all? I know that, at least here in San Francisco, just a few early morning searches can easily yield a case.
@Pat - I highly doubt you will easily be able to just find a mini-ITX case for free.
So, as I understand it, the biggest problem with this board is the graphics, especially in combination with linux. But if i put in an pci graphics card (fx 5200 or radeon 9250), would I then be able to run mythtv and output 1360×768 to a LCD-tv?
I’m thinking of using it as a small mediaserver, with an 500GB drive for movies on the sata and a dvd on the pata. Anyone here thinking this would work?
@Emil - yeah, if you want graphics with linux a PCI video card should do just fine for the application you’re interested in.
@Paul:
Ok, thanks. I think I’m going to try that. And hey, if it doesn’t work, then at least I’ll have a nice little NAS…:)
NTFS is fully supported by the package ntfs-3g.
It’s just a shit filesystem compared to open-source alternatives.
@ Pat and Paul RE Cases.
I wish I lived in a sufficiently urban area for that sort of business.
Mini-ITX is fully ATX compliant, I have installed a few VIA Epia boards in an ATX case. So Pat has technically got you there.
An alternative is to use an old SCSI external case, I have seen some nice modified ones with the ITX board in the bottom and the drive bays for RAID.