PC stuff - any help appreciated

[MDV]

I just moved house, and this is the state I want stuff to be in

On the ground floor there are 2 main rooms, a living room and a dining room which I have (naturally) converted into a music room/studio.

My main PC is in there and fully functional.

However, being that I hate TV and the landlords have given me one, I want to bury it somewhere and have a second PC in the lounge lined into my stereo (no problem, obviously) so I can listen to all the stuff I dont have on CD (Shhhhhh!!!!) and still watch DVDs on the monitor that will supplant the TV.

I have a laptop that would do the job admirably, but it sort of elimiates its portability and I dont want to leave it plugged in (wreck the battery) or be forever charging it.

So

I re-aquired my first PC (1000£ in 2001, sold to a mate a few years ago for 150 and him back to me for 20!) that I think might be able to hack it one way or another.

Spec -
Athlon 1600XP, 1.4odd Ghz, socket 754
512Mb ram
40Gb IDE

XP home (I have an XP pro OEM on standby, but dont want to have to waste it - I still have the original XPh disk for the PC anyway)

My thoughts are these:

Option 1 - The obvious - Hook up an external hard drive with by music on (>70Gb). Possible embuggerance: its USB 1. Will it load that amount in a tollerable amount of time? Can the PC deal with that size playlist (12,000 songs)? Possible solution: USB 2.0 PCI card. Will the contraption above deal with such a thing, or even recognise it?

Option 2: LAN or wireless connection to my main rig. I have no idea how to do this, but its obviously possible in principle. Possible embugerance(s): main rig is vista premium 64. Old is all 32 bit hardware and XPh, probably not even SP2 or 3.

Option 3: $%&# it. My laptop has surprisingly good dacs for the time being, and I can knock up or find the cheapest possible modern PC for the job.

Anyone have any advice?

[Transcend]

your old pc will handle it no problem

BUT you could get a media box.

they sell these in pc world for about £80 with a 300gb hard disc and you just hook it up to your tv & sound system and you can watch films and also listen your music.

[headtheball]

You could also get an internal hd, fit it to your main machine, buzz all the songs over, and then transfer it to the old one.

The networking wouldn't be a bother, really, but for sheer handiness I'd "hybridize" the approach. Stick a nice big HD in the old machine, having bunged your current music collection on it, and then update it over the network whenever you "rip new CD's" or "download copyright-free material" on the main rig.

Mystery third option. Source a Chipped original XboX with a big bugger of a hard drive in it, and use that as a media centre.

[Transcend]

You could also get an internal hd, fit it to your main machine, buzz all the songs over, and then transfer it to the old one.

The networking wouldn't be a bother, really, but for sheer handiness I'd "hybridize" the approach. Stick a nice big HD in the old machine, having bunged your current music collection on it, and then update it over the network whenever you "rip new CD's" or "download copyright-free material" on the main rig.

Mystery third option. Source a Chipped original XboX with a big bugger of a hard drive in it, and use that as a media centre.

or source & non chipped original xbox stick a big hdd in and buy splinter cell & a memory card & use the save game exploit to soft mod it.

[MDV]

Thanks chaps

I think my favourite plan is now - tolerate the 1.1USB, get 500Gb internal drive (generic IDE on amazon is 50£). Transfer the big collection once (which will take hours) and update when i feel like it (far more palletable).

Total cost of 70, bonus benefit of saving my laptops battery, total hassle of a day.

[Roobubba]

I'd also add that you can network all of your machines with homeplugs (plug into a power socket, use your power cables as a network). You could easily stream all of the media from your main machine on demand via either the laptop or your old rig (which is perfectly adequate for this purpose!), and not have to transfer the data, or buy another hard disk to store a copy of the media on. That also means you won't have the problem of multiple "copies" of your music library, because you KNOW what will happen: one will not be completely up-to-date relative to the other, and they'll slowly but surely get out of sync!

So, main machine acts as a server to the box (whichever you choose) in the lounge.

That's how I'd do it, anyway.

Roo

[headtheball]

Oh aye. there's no strict need to have multiple copies of the library, no doubt about that, but it can be a bit of a pain in the chops having to  ensure both boxes are on to ensure you can listen to music.

The sync problem is a valid one, but it is soluble. Put new stuff in a shared folder on the main machine, and just blow that whole folder over to the secondary every week or so. At the minute, I'm using itunes for sheer, automatic-folder-ising of everything handiness, and the system works pretty well. Mind you, I am pretty pernickety about that sort of thing...

[MDV]

I'd also add that you can network all of your machines with homeplugs (plug into a power socket, use your power cables as a network). You could easily stream all of the media from your main machine on demand via either the laptop or your old rig (which is perfectly adequate for this purpose!), and not have to transfer the data, or buy another hard disk to store a copy of the media on. That also means you won't have the problem of multiple "copies" of your music library, because you KNOW what will happen: one will not be completely up-to-date relative to the other, and they'll slowly but surely get out of sync!

So, main machine acts as a server to the box (whichever you choose) in the lounge.

That's how I'd do it, anyway.

Roo

That sounds great

But I have no clue how to do it!!

[Roobubba]

Very simple!

Your main machine must be one (as has been mentioned). You share the location of  your media which you wish to stream, and connect to this with the machine in the lounge (which is all wired up on ethernet through your swanky homeplugs, which just mean no trailing wires through the house).
Then, depending on what software you wish to use to play the media, you just browse to it and hey presto, it plays :)

Think of it as pretending you have a hard disk in the lounge machine, but it just happens not to be :)

Roo

[headtheball]

For a nice slim little media player, that won't cause much in the way of conflicts, can be set up to work with universal hotkeys (no matter what else I'm running, F9 is fast-forward, F8 is Rewind, F11 is Play/Pause, and F10 is the magic "hold on, I like the other songs on that album too. Stop being random" button) and is totally free, you could do a lot worse than Foobar.

[MDV]

Thanks roo

HTB, I already use foobar2K for its superior sound, good resampler and play-anythingness :D

[headtheball]

If it only had the same wee "song now playing" bubbles as Winamp 5 I'd declare it perfect.

[MDV]

I barely noticed that it didnt have that!

I like the frequency annotated 80 band EQ graphic.

[_tom_]

I tried to get on with foobar but its so much hassle even to just change the skin/theme. Kinda feels like its being awkard to use just for the same of it. I prefer winamp :D

[headtheball]

Only a suggestion, but another good addition to any living-room media PC type setup is a big fat batter of MAME and similar games and a couple of (wireless, usb) Joypads. Proper Old School fun.