Setting up the computer

Loihi rigged for setup Today the AC-adapter (220v to 12V, 5A), DC-converter (12V to ATX), IDE-adapter (3.5" to 2.5") and ATX extender arrived, which enabled me to set up the computer ("Loihi", to keep in line with my Hawai'ian volcanoes naming scheme). After verifying the HD is connected correctly (with the cheap supplied 40 wire cable :-() I installed W2K. The whole system is so quiet - no moving parts except the HD. The CPU gets pretty warm, so some additional fan might be needed.

I installed the J2SE SDK 5.0, the web cam driver, the wireless driver, and some more. I got some resistance since I didn't have any SP ready, and I know some software will not complain but simply not work if SP 4 is not installed - a to do for tomorrow.

The wireless network (USB) worked without a hitch. The web cam worked, but very jerkily and with horizontal stripes in the recorded movie (stills are OK). Hm - I hope I can find some alternative software to get better results than this! Playing back recorded TV shows (this obviously is not a requirement for the ship, but for use at home) with VLC is not very smooth either, but with Power DVD it is - maybe the latter can make use of the hardware MPG decoder. I could not get the Hauppauge PVR350 driver to install, but if I remember correctly this will be solved by installing SP4.

As it is with setting up a box, this took me over 3h... Good news, too: the model ship finally got back to me, not to deliver items but to make sure they order what I want. Arghh... Well, this time I hope it works, and I might get the stuff by the end of the week.