Comments on: DIY: 200 Dollar PC, Part 2

By: Wes

Wes — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 23:10:37 +0000

Hi Paul,
I know this post is a year old, but I had question. Are you running the GUI version of Ubuntu? Which one did you go with?

By: Miles Carter

Miles Carter — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:48:18 +0000

@ 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.

By: C

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:24:54 +0000

NTFS is fully supported by the package ntfs-3g.

It’s just a shit filesystem compared to open-source alternatives.

By: …You can build your own 200 Dollar PC? at Didnt You Hear…

…You can build your own 200 Dollar PC? at Didnt You Hear… — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:10:57 +0000

[...] [Paul Stamatiou - 200 Dollar PC - Part 2] [...]

By: Emil

Emil — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:22:40 +0000

@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…:)

By: Paul Stamatiou

Paul Stamatiou — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:45:41 +0000

@Emil – yeah, if you want graphics with linux a PCI video card should do just fine for the application you’re interested in.

By: Emil

Emil — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:41:11 +0000

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?

By: The Sub $250 killer PC at Have You Met Ted?

The Sub $250 killer PC at Have You Met Ted? — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:03:29 +0000

[...] fellow Atlanta techy Paul Stamatiou posted a how-to on building a sub $200 PC. Since I’m in the market for a replacement to my current 2 [...]

By: Paul Stamatiou

Paul Stamatiou — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:12:25 +0000

@Pat – I highly doubt you will easily be able to just find a mini-ITX case for free.

By: Pat

Pat — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 08:33:00 +0000

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.

By: Blake Brannon

Blake Brannon — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:21:28 +0000

Nice post. If I had a Macbook, I would definitely build one to make a Time Capsule, but I prefer the speed of Firewire800.

By: Daniel Andrade

Daniel Andrade — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 22:30:38 +0000

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.

By: Ronald Heft

Ronald Heft — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:48:22 +0000

@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.

By: Chuck

Chuck — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:04:13 +0000

Great write-up. I want to setup a home NAS device, and this might just be the ticket…

By: Hamish M

Hamish M — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:37:06 +0000

Great follow up, Paul! I look forward to seeing how you case it up. (You should spray paint your logo on it or something…)

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:29:31 +0000

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? ;)

By: David Moore

David Moore — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:26:22 +0000

@Paul it is, i was just messing.

By: Timothy Andrew

Timothy Andrew — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:24:59 +0000

@stammy – Didn’t think of that. Makes sense. :)

By: Paul Stamatiou

Paul Stamatiou — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:24:11 +0000

@David – Isn’t dpkg-reconfigure common unix knowledge, been using it for years…

By: David Moore

David Moore — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:12:56 +0000

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?

By: David Moore

David Moore — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:12:56 +0000

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?

By: Paul Stamatiou

Paul Stamatiou — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:12:42 +0000

@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.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:24:37 +0000

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. :-)

By: titanium_geek

titanium_geek — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:14:12 +0000

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

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:31:50 +0000

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.