My Home System

I certainly have had countless hours of fun building and working with this system.  But, as you can see by the carcass in the spinning chair  .  .  after sinking half my life savings into this - the only thing I really have to show for it is an ever-widening girth   :)

At home, I have 3 PC's and a laptop networked together using Linksys LTN1000 cards, and a 100 MHz Linksys Wireless Access Point Router.  Why network them??  Initially so we could print from all four, but we quickly found the real joy was in multiplayer games (especially Rise of Rome and Motocross Madness) !!!

• Dell 650 MHz PIII, upgraded to 1.2 GHz (using a PowerLeap CPU kit)

• Supermicro P6SBA 350 MHz PII  (upgraded to 600 MHz)

• Supermicro P6SBA 350 MHz PII (upgraded to 450 MHz)

The Dell 650 MHz PIII is upgraded up to the max  :

The Details

• KDS automatic CD Tower (recent purchase, so not shown) - connects to my PC's USB port - holds 72 CD's, and you just select which one you want within the provided Windows utility.  The CD pops out - best item I have ever bought !!!

• USB 1-to4 port extender  (how can anyone live with only 2 USB ports ?? )

• Audigy 2 sound card

• Sony Dual Cassette deck - feeding input and output of sound card

• Plextor 40/12/40 CD-RW Burner

• Pioneer DVR-A05 DVD burner

• 22-inch NEC MultiSynch FP1350, flat monitor

• Yamaha Speakers (HUGE magnets - best speakers ever - but no longer made)

• Yamaha Sub-woofer

• Creative Labs RIVA TNT-16 Video Card

• Seagate 20 GB Travan tape backup

• "Backpack" external 80 gig drive

• Scanmaker E3 Scanner - 300 dpi, why get 600 or 1200 (the eyes can't see that resolution, and printed material cannot sustain that DPI since the ink dots meld)

• networked HP 5L Laser Printer (for B&W)

• networked HP Deskjet 970 Cse (for color - best I've ever seen) - no printer switch needed, the 5L plugs into the parallel port, and the 970 Cse plugs into the USB port

• Canopus DVraptor video capture card (for input from my SONY TRV900 digital camcorder, w/48x Zoom, and 3 CCD's)

• next to my PC, feeding the video capture card:  small RCA color TV with two JVC VCR's and cable TV.  This way, at any instant I can record video from Cable, VCR, or the Digital Camcorder

• SanDisk USB flash card reader (for input from a Coolpix 950 2.2 Megapixel DigiCam with 80 MB of Compact Flash)

• Audio Buddy pre-amp (for my Shure SM57 mic, to allow it to be plugged into the "Line In" jack, instead of the Mic jack (PC mic's and PC sound card's mic inputs are a notoriously poor combination - the signal level is just too low)

This system has a few unique capabilities.  By far, the most enjoyable hobby I have found is working with videos.  The capture card in my PC is connected to the video stream from my VCR.  Since the cable box feeds into my VCR, and I can also plug my digital camcorder into my VCR, or even directly into the video capture card - I can bring in clips from cable TV, VHS tapes, DV tapes, or recordings.

In this way, I can go to a party, for example, and shot 2 hours of film.  The ordinary camcorder guy would then have family over and bore them to tears with the 2 hours of footage.  But I will record the top several instances during that 2 hours, into my PC.  Then I can chop, cut, combine, and even add background music and/or special effects.  When I am done, I send the final product back out to tape.  Then, when the family comes over, we all sit down and watch 10 minutes of fascinating video, and then go on to eat, play badminton, etc.

Another hobby I have developed is writing midi files (music files) and use the Mic and pre-amp to record my voice.  It is basically like a high-end Karaoke system.  The problem with PC sound cards, is that universally, the Mic input is very poor quality-wise.  The line input, on the other hand, has very good sound quality.  I use the "Audio Buddy" by Midiman, to boost the signal level to the point where it can be plugged directly into the Line Input.  That gives me almost "studio-like" quality for voice recordings. 

As a Side Note - how to create a looped animated GIF, like the Spinning Chair -  I had my daughter take 16 snapshots of me using the digital camera.  I rotated the chair 30 degrees each time, so she snapped me at 0^o, 30^o, 60^o,  .  .  .  all the way up to 330^o.  Then I had to reduce the image sizes (since my camera defaults to a very large 1200x1600 resolution) using Photoshop.  To speed it up, I used the File/Automate . . . Web Gallery function, which makes thumbnails.  I didn;t want thumbnails, but this function lets you choose a custom size, which I did.  Then I used "Gif Animator" to import the 16 images and saved it as an animated GIF.  The gif was huge intitially - but Gif Animator has an Animation Wizard, that helps you to reduce the file size greatly.  You can select anywhere from 1 to 256 colors.  I used 64 colors, instead of the default 256  -  and it looked fine.