The hardware that has been selected has to meet several criteria. It must be small and attractive enough to resemble a set-top box, it must be quiet and all the drivers for the components must be supported by Linux. The system chosen is a barebones system from Shuttle, the system components were selected for quality and a reasonable price. Cheaper component could have been used and it may have been possible to save 10% of the total cost. The hardware components are:
Quiet as possible
Intel of AMD64 processor
2 PCI slots or 1 PCI slot + wifi adapter
Audio Optical Output
Built in Graphics Card
Serial ATA drives
Shuttle XPC SB83G5M, Intel 915G, Socket LGA775, Media Center (567.-)
Shuttle PN18, XPC Wireless LAN Adapter, 802.11g (150.-)
Intel Pentium 4 511 2.8 GHz BOX, 1MB, 533MHz FSB, LGA775 (145.-)
Kingston KHX3200AK2/1G, 1024MB als 2x512MB DDR400 Kit, CL2 (149.-)
Samsung HD300LJ, T133, 7200rpm, 8MB, 300GB, SATA-II (140.-)
Plextor PX-750A, 16x DVD
RW Writer, grau+schwarz, Retail
(92.-)
Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350, Personal Video Recording (192.-)
Shuttle PF60 Tragetasche für XPC Barebones (94.-)
It took several hours to assemble the system, a barebones system is more fiddly to assemble than a standard PC. The manuals supplied by Shuttle are good quality and clearly written. Once the system was built, connected to a monitor, keyboard, mouse and a power cable. A Knoppix 5.0.1 bootable CD was placed in the DVD drive and the system was powered up, it worked first time.
The assemble of the system went quite smoothly. The installation of the wireless LAN adapter was a bit awkward. The CPU was easy enough, the cooling fan that was supplied with the procesor was not required. The memory as installed with a snap. The S-ATA hard disk was installed into the drive holder; S-ATA drives are much easier to connect than standard IDE drives. The DVD drive needed some accurate positioning to ensure that the eject button aligned with the door button. One cable that was not supplied is an audio cable to connect the DVD drive to the motherboard. The WinTV card was installed in the PCI slot. The connector that opens the drive door need to be changed to the 1.8mm riser.
In Section 2.3.2 you will see the PCI ids
Shuttle PN18, XPC Wireless LAN Adapter, 802.11g zd1211 ZyDAS ZD1211 802.11b/g download UserGuide
Intel Pentium 4 511 2.8 GHz BOX, 1MB, 533MHz FSB, LGA775
Kingston KHX3200AK2/1G, 1024MB als 2x512MB DDR400 Kit, CL2
Samsung HD300LJ, T133, 7200rpm, 8MB, 300GB, SATA-II
Plextor PX-750A, 16x DVD
RW Writer, grau+schwarz, Retail
Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350, Personal Video Recording IVTV Driver http://ivtvdriver.org/index.php/Main_Page url
IVTV Driver http://ivtvdriver.org/index.php/Main_Page htmlurl
IVTV Driver locator
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82915G-/GV-/910GL Express Chipset Family Graphics Controller (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev d3)
00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FR (ICH6/ICH6R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM-/FR-/FW-/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FR/FRW (ICH6R/ICH6RW) SATA Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:09.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC15 MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
01:0a.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80)
01:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 13)