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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 11 - Cracking the iPhone
June 30th, 2007 - David Randolph and guest host Leah Culver stress test and then tear apart the iPhone immediately upon exiting the Apple store on launch day.

Episode 10 - Digg the Digg Button
June 15th, 2007 - DIGG, DIGG, DIGG, It's a circular world we are living in and what better way to show it off than with a Digg button that shows the Digg count of the Digg story you Digg on a giant Digg button display in the Digg offices ...

Episode 9 - Maker Faire 2007
June 1st, 2007 - We take you through the second annual Maker Faire with Dan Huard and Jessica Corbin to find some of the most interesting projects out there. From two story houses on wheels to hooker shoes with LCD screens to cupcake car...

Episode 8 - Crane Game
May 18th, 2007 - Claw games are everywhere and there are almost as dark mysterious and full of questionable content as the Internet. Patrick, Dan and Dave take you through the inner working of a claw game and then combine the two greates...

Episode 7 - AppleTV
May 12th, 2007 - Patrick Norton and Dave Randolph take you through some of the more popular hacks and mods out there for the AppleTV. They have sorted out all the articles out there and have come up with a complete step by step procedure...

Episode 6 - Maker Faire
May 17th, 2006 - The 2006 Maker Faire presents the do-it-yourself community with thousands of finished projects and inspired ideas. For their inaugural expo, Systm host, Dan Huard enlists the help of DigitalLife's Patrick Norton to scou...

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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 tehBoris on 07/18/2008 at 07:11:45 pm in Systm

"

and it is an 'extra'. The add-on for the Drobo is basically like any other NAS device except it is stylised to match the looks of the Drobo and it definitely will work with a 2TB external drive. Some thing like the NSLU2 should also work with the Drobo to make it a NAS as it should support a 2TB drive. NAS devices that use FAT are stupid and unreliable. the NSLU2 wants to use EXT3 but can use FAT if you are so desperate for it to eventually fail.

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 Dosbomber on 07/18/2008 at 11:28:27 pm in Systm

Radio Shack rarely has a decent selection of electronic component parts anymore, they've sold out to the Cell phone sales industry (would you like a T-Mobile service plan with that?).
Some are better than others, I have 3 RSs in my area and one of them is fairly decent, but in another one, neither of the clerks had any idea what a AAAA battery was (it was 2-3 feet behind them, on a wall of other less common batteries).

Anyway, to source electronic parts, try the following:
www.mouser.com (great place, great service)
www.digikey.com (they have pretty much anything you'd need, but a little more pricey)
www.alliedelec.com
www.jameco.com (good introductory place, basic availability)
www.sparkfun.com (not so much common discrete components, but a lot of specialty stuff)
www.newark.com

There are plenty of others on the web, but these are the ones I frequent.

Why Is Roger Chang

Posted by davmoo on 07/17/2008 at 10:07:20 pm in Systm

Roger is always good on Cranky Geeks...but I want to see him be more cranky. I want to see him come across the table and give Dvorak a good punch in the face!

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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