New TV! And soon, a HTPC!

Well I got a new TV… FINALLY! I just happens to be a Philips 42PFL6704D/F7. 1080p, 120Hz, LCD, full HD! It is quite a nice TV, perfect for the entry level TV buyer. I searched all around town trying to find the perfect one. I picked this size because its the perfect size for our apartment also it fit perfect into my budget. (Thank you tax refund!) Here’s a picture:

One of the main picking points is that it happens to be 120 Hz.  For some reason, it just looks so much better to me! The slim profile as well was a good option. I hate the TVs with the huge black border just to make their size look bigger. Well now that I have a good TV, I need other fun devices for it! I already had a blue ray player thanks to Service Center of the Year party at my old job, so no extra money there. Not something I would have picked, but hey, its free! I tried to get my Moxi DVR to work but for some god awful reason Charter felt the need to disable the DVI port. WTF??!!1?one! So I have to settle with the rat’s nest of component wires behind it. At least it does 1080i. Since I have an HD package and my 6 months are almost up, perhaps I’ll call to get a new one. I also had my old Dell Latitude D800 running as a little movie relay for my old TV since it had an s-video port. It worked very nice, did the job just fine. When I hooked it up to the new TV I was quite shocked it actually did 1920×1080, great considering its blazing fast GeForce4 Go! But upon finding that YouTube struggles to play any video, I figured an HTPC is in order.

Ah the Home Theater Personal Computer! Every AV nerds dream! I decided to head over to NewEgg.com and pick out some parts. First and foremost was the case. I have a TV stand I would like it to fit into, but I’m limited on height, so I found this:

This is the Thermaltake Mozart Sx VC7001SNS! At only 90mm high and 442mm wide, this baby is perfect! It also supports full ATX motherboards as well with 2 80mm fans. The key for the low height is the 2 PCI and 1 PCIe x16 riser card. This will be great for the possible future tuner card. Since space was small I decited, for the first time in my life, to settle with the on-board video. So a riser card is not that important now. Next up is the motherboard:

So this is the revamped ASUS P5Q-EM. Now its a Micro ATX, but its one of the few ASUS boards that have an HDMI port on the connections! Just so you know I am quite biased when it comes to motherboards. I always have used ASUS boards and I will continue to do so. They have served me very well in the past and their replacement program is phenomenal! Connections:The specs for this board are as follows: CPU: LGA775, FSB: 1600(o.c.)/1333MHz, North Bridge: Intel G45, South Bridge: Intel ICH10R, Memory: 4 Dual Channel DDR2 1066(O.C)/800 Max 16GB, 1 PCI, 2 PCIe x1, 1 PCIe x16 2.0, 1 PATA, 6 SATA 3.0Gbps RAID 0/1/5/10, Video: Intel GMA X4500HD, Audio: Realtek ALC1200 8 Channel, 3 x USB connectors support additional 6 USB ports, 1 internal firewire, INIC: Realtek 8111C 10/100/1000 Mbps, PLUS an HDMI port! I had to decide between this and the ASUS P5N7A-VM. The reason for picking this one is the FSB as well as the older PCIe port. Given, the latter board runs NVIDIA chips, but still not worth the FSB difference. The processor I went with was the Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz FSB 1333Mhz. Not the best I could get, but reasonable with the price. Plus, I can always upgrade in the future! Here is the memory I picked for it:

This is the OCZ Fatal1ty Edition 4GB (2x2GB) Dual Channel DDR2, PC2 6400 Memory. I did not get the 16o0Mhz because with this motherboard, you have to overclock it to get that speed. Since space, and cooling options are limited I will stick with this memory. OCZ is good, I have used them before and never a problem. The timing on this ram is decent at 5-4-4-18. Next up, CPU cooler:

This is the Thermaltake CL-P0257 Blue orb II. This is probably one of the only good coolers that would work with this case. Thermaltake recommended it in the manual for the case and from what I found, this is the only one that would work well. Thermaltake recommends a cooler no more than 70mm high, and this one sits right at 66mm. Perfect! I used one of these in my old P4 machine and it was very quite and kept the CPU very cool! Storage:

This is the Western Digital RE3 7200RPM 1TB hard drive. Plenty of space for DVDs and what not. This is the Raid Edition 3 which means it should run good and long as well as semi cool. The case only has slots for 2 so perhaps I will get another in the future. And finally, Power:

This bad boy, the Ultra X3 600-Watt Power Supply is fantastic, super powerful and modular! It is definitely overkill so this power supply may change in the future, but the modular quality is very important in this very small case. It will definitely help with the clutter and help keep things cool.

Now all I need is money….

Howto: Siemens Gigaset SE567 Bridge Mode and PPPoE

Well after about 6 years of rockin a Dlink DSL-504 I decided to upgrade. The previous modem has worked very well, sure it degraded and lost all but 1 of its Ethernet ports… but I ran a fantastic European firmware on it for years and had it perfectly tuned. Too bad I could never get the stupid thing to bridge… The strange thing about this device is it started to block certain websites. I was very confused on this one for months! First I thought that it was my server, but everything seemed to check out. Then I learned only a few particular computers would be blocked. This really messed things up! How does this happen?! Then I was 99.99% certain it was Frontier Internet. So I left it at that. But since this DSL modem is so old I decided to upgrade. I called up Frontier and asked specifically for a modem that was NOT wireless, but they sent me the Siemens Gigaset SE567 one anyways. Plus a really lame monthly modem rental charge. What happened to free modems?! These “Internet” companies are getting savage! Either way, on to what I found about bridging this modem, and oh yes, it CAN be done!

From testing this device, I found that 1. The wireless sucks, 2. This modem will not bridge and do PPPoE at the same time. So the first thing to do would be to get a client that can do PPPoE. I used my server, but any router, whether it is wireless or not, should do the job just fine.  I will explain how to setup Linux below as well.

This is with Frontier Communications personalized firmware:

1.  Attach your computer directly to a LAN port on the modem and log in as admin to the modem interface.
2. Click on ‘ISP Connection.’
3. Click ‘Advanced Settings’, then click ‘Configure the ATM Virtual Circuit.’
4. Click ‘Add a New VC.’
5. Set the VPI to 0 and the VCI to 35 (These could be different, check with the previously used VC to confirm). Click ‘Next.’
6. Select ‘RFC-2684 Bridged’ and Click Next.
7. Enter a name for the connection (or just leave the default) and click Next then click Finish.
8. Delete all of the VCs except the one you just created. (you can always restore defaults)
9. Make sure the new VC is Enabled and Reboot the modem.

You now have a basic modem with no more annoying second NAT. Another reason is if you have a server, it is good to get your outside IP address directly to your computer and have your beefy firewall take care of everything.   At this point, acquire a router and plug it into the modem. Set it up for PPPoE and enter your credentials. You should be connected to the Internet!

Now to make this work on Linux, you need a package called rp-pppoe. For Fedora 9 as root you can install it as follows:

yum install rp-pppoe

This will install the proper package. From then, there are 2 ways to setup the PPPoE connection. Graphically or through the command prompt. I did this graphically and that is what I will explain, but I know that there is a script at /sbin/pppoe-setup that is a good starting point.
To setup the PPPoE connection go to ‘System” -> ‘Administration’ -> ‘Network’. From there, edit the Ethernet card that the DSL modem is connected to (typically eth0). Set the card to ‘Staticly Set Ip Addresses’ and leave all of the fields blank. Click Ok, then ‘Deactivate’ and ‘Activate’ the device, saving all changes.
To insert the PPPoE connection:

1. Click ‘New’, Select xDSL connection, Forward.
2. Select the blanked out Ethernet device from earlier, Enter provider name (Frontier), Account type Normal, and your credentials, Forward
3. Then click Apply

After that, this is all you need for a simple PPPoE connection. To further configure it, open up the configuration on the xDSL connection and head over to the advanced tab. In this tab, make sure ‘Restart if connection dies’ and ‘Make this connection the default route’ are checked. You may also check ‘Use synchronous PPP’ but not all providers support this so I would test for this function later. After this, go back to the General tab and check ‘Activate device when computer starts’ only if you want to. And if you run your own DNS, uncheck ‘Automatically obtain DNS information from provider’.

There! Now watch your messages log when you first connect to make sure no errors pop up. You can do this by running this command in terminal:

tail -f /var/log/messages

This will give you live updates of your messages log. If you have problems, you may want to check to see if you bridged the modem correctly. To do this, issue this command in terminal:

pppoe -I eth0 -A

Of course, replace eth0 with whatever Ethernet port is connected to your Modem. What this command will do is query your service providers servers for a connection route. You should get an output as such:

Access-Concentrator: SERVER.SERVER.AC
Got a cookie: xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx
AC-Ethernet-Address: 00:00:00:00:00:00
--------------------------------------------------

Of course, yours will be different. If you do not get anything like this, or you get a “pppoe: Timeout waiting for PADO packets” error, then it may be wise to go back and check the configuration of your modem.

Enjoy and happy PPPoE’ing! =)

Sources:
Siemens Gigaset SE567 Port Forward Problems
PPPOE setup on Fedora Linux