www.TheJoe.com

Well, I have been busy these past few days. We’ve been prepping for our move to the condo in Vegas which is the first step of getting out of dodge. In reference to that, we have been working on selling some stuff around the house. Namely, most of the computer gear. I was originally hoping to sell off everything in one shot, but this is not the case. However, we did sell off 11 of the computers to a budding business and good group of guys. I’ve updated the sale site with what we have left http://4sale.thejoe.com we’ve still got a few systems if anyone is interested.

Also, a quick update on MXO (Matrix Online). Jens’ and I have been playing when we get the time and are Read the complete Post.

Welp, we got Vista installed in the VM with no issues. It ran dog slow, even with all the pretty extras turned off. I bumped the VM’s memory from 1gig to 1.5gig and that helped a lot.

Anyways, I could not get the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2’s drivers to kick in. It kept saying something along the lines that the drivers were not made for this edition of windows.

Which is odd. I have been told that the NVTV drivers would not work and I have two Vista boxes running with nVidia NVTV dual tuner cards running great.

Welp, that’s that for the WinTV-PVR, we’re going to try out the Adaptec DUAL Tuner USB device for MCE. Gonna order one soon and give that a go. The more tuner’s the better

WE DID IT!!!

We succeded in getting Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 R2 with a TUNER in a VMWare window.

Was quite simple actually. Steps:

1. Installed MCE in a Virtual Machine (512 Megs of ram and 20Gig of HD)
2. Plugged Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 into server
3. Allocated the USB to the VM
4. Installed drivers in the VM
5. Setup XBox360 to be Extender

Voila! We did it. Now, on the 3danalyze. This part I have not fully configured, so you can not actually watch TV on the VM itself (video drivers dont support direct3d) BUT we were able to connect from the XBox360 Extender and use the tuner on the server!

Read the complete Post.

Looks like I just won’t listen to other tech guys out there sometimes.   I am trying to do what seems to me is theoretically possible but in actuality may be impossible.

Anyways, the latest “fun” project to me is getting Windows XP Media Center 2005 R2 to run in a virtual machine.

SO, here is the plan:

I am setting up a box that will run VMWare Server (doing this for the USB support)

I have a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR USB that has hardware mpeg 2 encoding. (needed for MCE)

The box configuration is:

AMD Athlon 3700+
4 Gig Ram
2x 300 Gig SATA drives in Striped Raid Config
1x 160 Gig Boot Drive

Host OS is Windows 2003 Enterprise Server x64 (why? because I have a liscense for it!)

1) I will install Windows MCE 2005 R2 in a VM
2) I will run 3d Analyze to emulate DirectX 9 in the VM
3) I will install the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR USB and route the USB to the VM (VM Server does this)

and if everything goes well, I should have a fully running MCE in a VM!

Why do I do this?  Because I can!

We began last week or so consolidating our computers at the house. We had a pretty extensive network running with over 30 computers. We used to use them for gaming and what not. We had some awesome LAN parties over the years.

Since we’re moving to a much smaller place in preperation for our migration from Vegas, we started consolidating.

Our network is now:

Big Blue - 3ghz, 2gig ram, 2 Terrabyte array running windows 2003 R2 Enterprise (domain controller)
Sliver Streak - AMD64, 4gig ram, 800 gig in HD, running windows 2003 Standard with VMWare Server

Mine and Jen’s gaming rigs

Angel and Dana’s computers

Draylan’s Laptop

Andrew’s Gaming rig and Media Center Box

1 XBOX360, 1 PS2

Quite a pairdown eh?

We’ll be putting up a list of computers for sale once we get them tested, wiped, etc. Looks like about 14 Monitors and about 20 Computers will be up for sale.