New Projects

I have two new computer bsaed projects I plan to build.

Basically what I am going to do is softmod my Xbox to run XBMC (Xbox Media Centre) and build a new case for it (with a bigger HDD, a slimline DVD, and infrared reciever for a universal remote/wireless controller) based around the two things that have inspired this in me:

The Xbox Mini
and
The AppleTV (I'm not gonna give a link - just google it if you don't know what it looks like)

I also want to give it wireless networking capabilities and install and LCD in the front to show time elapsed/time remaining on media file.

Thats really about it as far as the Xbox goes. My other project is kind of lame to follow that with. I am going to build a file/print server PC. I can't seem to find a whole lot of good information out there on this, all the E-Hows and stuff are just ridiculously uninformative, and I can't seem to find a good forum dealing with this topic.

Ideally what I want to do with this is to use an old system I got given (I think its a Pentium III system), rip all the unnecessary bits and pieces out of it (sound card, graphics card floppy drive and the like), and jam as many huge HDD's as I can in there so that I can stream media to my new media centre, and any other computers I choose, as well as acting as a print server (currently I have shared a local printer on the desktop to print from anywhere). I will probably also want to underclock the processor, and if possible, install a smaller PSU to reduce power consumption.

Some other ideas I have for this project are to include a torrent downloader to download files into their respective places on the file server, and set one HDD aside for automated system backups of all networked systems in the house.

I guess that one is actually starting to look like a pretty intense project in itself too.