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About Systm

Systm is the Do It Yourself show designed for the common geek who wants to quickly and easily learn how to dive into the latest and hottest tech projects. We will help you avoid pitfalls and get your project up and running fast. Read more

Patrick Norton

The latest from Systm: Episode 60 - Build Your Own NAS

If you're just itching for an excuse to reuse that retired desktop PC or laptop sitting in your closet there here's your chance. Today we'll be looking at the basics of installing FreeNAS, an open-source DIY NAS. So instead of spending money on off the shelf options why not save yourself some cash and make use of the stuff you already have and get a super customizable network storage device to boot.

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Episode 53 - The diyMod: Ultimate Audio or a Dead iPod
June 2nd, 2008 - The diyMod skips the headphone amp in your iPod to get pure audio straight from the source... this is one of the toughest mods we've ever attempted!

Episode 52 - Build a Must-Have iPod Accessory
May 27th, 2008 - We show you how to replace an expensive iPhone/iPod dock with a small, cheap and very portable cable.

Episode 51 - DIY Liquor: Distill Your Own Alcohol
May 19th, 2008 - You don't need yards of copper pipe to make liquor. Julia Nolan, a chemical engineer, shows us how to distill alcohol the easy way.

Episode 50 - Add Night Vision To Your Car: Avoid Suicidal Deer
May 12th, 2008 - Adding thermal imaging to your car is a lot easier than you might think... think car stereo plus some light fabrication. Seeing further in the dark? That's priceles

Episode 49 - Gas Prices killing you? We can help you max out your MPG!
May 5th, 2008 - Gas is over $4.00 a gallon all over San Francisco, so this episode is all about proven methods to get more MPG from your car, from changing the air filter to giving up on using your brakes.

Episode 48 - Watercooling is Fun!
April 28th, 2008 - On David Randolph's final episode we go deep inside the thermal management on a $5000 PC, install a watercooling kit on the $500 and fabricate a fan adapter with the VersaLASER.

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Show idea/question

Posted by grantfordummies on 07/18/2008 at 10:20:54 pm in Systm

Hi, Im a long tme subscriber of systm since the first video podcasts sent out from you guys and had a show idea/question for you guys.

I remembered the mythTV project and have always wanted to do it, but thought it would be more interesting to have it be an all around media center with a sound card for suround sound hookup and put in a dvd and blu-ray drive and play dvd's from it as well as the dvr functions. I want to see how systm would do this because I remember you saying there isnt any software supporting blu ray on linux and the dvr box software requires the linux os.

Major help needed working on a cocktail cabinet

Posted by Dosbomber on 07/18/2008 at 11:06:56 pm in Systm

It's not likely I'll be personally building my own MAME cabinet, I just don't have the room, but a guy at work who has one is constantly talking about *link*

NAS or Server

Posted by computoman on 07/19/2008 at 02:51:28 pm in Systm

You can install linux on the nslu2 and make it a real nas. That is what I did. Not only was it a file server, but it became a web, itunes like, and etc server.

Please, PLEASE NO MORE SOFTWARE INSTALLS! Bring back old Systm!

Posted by computoman on 07/18/2008 at 05:13:36 pm in Systm

Even if it were only once a month, there could be a whole new show just to do the installs. I know I would watch.

How Big of A Power Supply Do I Need?

Posted by tehBoris on 07/17/2008 at 01:10:14 am in Systm

The only reason I got a 700W over my old 480W was for the 9800 which requires two PCIe connectors.

Individual HDD LEDs...

Posted by tehBoris on 07/16/2008 at 03:24:13 pm in Systm

"
Does this sound like a possibly good project for Systm?"

It sounds like a good project but not exactly possible with in the scope of Systm.

Ideally this would be a feature of the drive controller rather than some thing you mod in. I'm not sure how you could set this up. You could get some kind of 'drive monitor' that sit in between the drive and the control which has the functionality of a LED activity indicator.

Suggestion

Posted by mikec on 07/19/2008 at 07:52:54 am in Systm

To the OP, if you still have a phone book, look in the Yellow pages for "Electronics-dealers". If you live in town or city of a decent size you should find local places that have things. I have a Radio Shack that is two minutes away or a nicely stocked locally owned electronics shop that is 10-20 minutes away depending on traffic. The local shop also carries Jameco stuff, so I can get almost anything in the Jameco catalog there as well.

Why Is Roger Chang

Posted by pdg45acp on 07/19/2008 at 06:08:09 pm in Systm

Roger seems to add fun to whatever is going on.

I hope we see more of him.

emusic list

Posted by axekickmechanic on 07/15/2008 at 04:50:29 pm in Systm

love the list pat had setup i didnt like the bouncing souls live album eh i just dont like live albums period the only one i can bear to listen is the mxpx one if only they had true believers has to be one of my favorite bouncing souls song man they have a huge list i jus wished they carried more mainstream stuff also bad religion plz :o

Episode 60 - Build Your Own NAS [Discussion]

Posted by computoman on 07/16/2008 at 12:40:06 pm in Systm

"The Drobo loses the size of the biggest drive for overhead/parity/caching/magic juju, so in the example earlier about 100GB/100GB/60GB you'll end up with 160 GB on the Drobo in that case. It's smart enough that you can pull out any of the drives and it can rebuild things, at least if you only have a single drive fail, I don't know about multiple drive failure.

Then again multiple drive failure would fuck up a RAID too.

And yeah the FreeNAS has a lot more configurability options, but that's why we live in a world with options :) Different strokes for different folks, I'd definitely rather have a Drobo than a FreeNAS myself just because my needs are just straight home backup so just having the extremely simple Red/Yellow/Green pull out/pop in new drives Drobo system is much more convenient for me (albeit a little more expensive) than a FreeNAS, which is definitely a better solution for a file server in an office."

To each his own...... But, I can check the status of my system just by accessing it's web page. The web page will give me more info than a bunch of lights. Therefore I can check the status remotely, so I do not have to babysit the system.

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Internet Television Leader Revision3 Announces Interest in Science and Stuff
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San Francisco, CA --- Revision3 Corporation, the TV Network for the Internet generation, has announc... read more »

Prime Time, Revision3 Style
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In the old days, BR (Before Revision3), there was just one prime time. Every night Ma, Pa and the k... read more »

Watch Revision3 on Blip.tv!
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