JM4N.com

Jm4n.com

Home Page for J-Man
J•Man DJ Services can be found Here

Quite Note: October 28, 2008
Just looking at the below for nastalgic reasons... but for an update, at this time, I have a Linux box hooked to my HDTV, and two Windows laptops. That's it. Nice and simple... but to see what a geek I used to be, read on about the gear I had two years ago:

Update: September 1, 2006
I picked up a new video card since the old Voodoo3 decided to die. I added an NVidia GeForce 6200 PCI, so I now have three monitors AND a television. The small TV up top is used mostly for video preview while editing videos (see my videos section). I was worried about driver issues, running two NVidia GeForce cards, but the install was so seemless I couldn't believe it. Windows knew what to do automatically, and everything just worked -- no driver CD or downloads... it just magically worked...

Never before have I had a total downtime of less than five minutes, while making such an intense upgrade. This is all thanks to NVidia's Unified Driver Architecture, meaning that any NVidia card will use the same driver. They are apparently specifically designed to work well in multiple instances, as well.

Below is the result: An IBM 17-inch, a Microtek 18-inch, and a Compaq 17-inch. Oh, and an Orion 13-inch TV. The Zenith 27-inch (lower-left) is mostly used as a television and to view the security camera... it is no longer connected to the PC. The Bose 901's are now standing sideways to accomodate the space requirements...

Other than this, everything else described below is still the same.

Update: August 5, 2006
Wow, this page is MASSIVELY out of date! I'm going to update it now:

Main PC:
My main Windows XP system is as follows:

EPOX Mainboard (VIA KT-880)
AMD Athlon 2400+, overclocked to 2.07 GHz (138 MHz bus speed)
1.5 GB DDR-333 RAM (yes, a gig and a half)
40 GB Maxtor HDD (C:, system boot drive)
80 GB Seagate HDD (D:, video editing storage)
200 GB Maxtor USB 2.0 External HDD (Music & Karaoke)
52x32x52 CD-RW
24x DVD-ROM
4-in-1 Media Card Reader
NVidia GeForce 440MX Ti-4600 AGP Video (old, but fast enough)
~~3dfx Voodoo3 PCI Video (even older, circa 1997)~~
(New 9/1/06) 3D Fusion NVidia GeForce 6200 PCI Graphics Card (still old, but only $40 new in box)
Microtek 18" LCD Flat-Panel Monitor @ 1280x1024 (NVidia)
Compaq V700 17" CRT @ 1152x864 (Voodoo3)
Zenith 27" Console TV @ 640x480 (NVidia via S-Video Out)
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Sound Card
On-Board VIA Audio
Tascam US-224 USB/MIDI/Audio Interface

That's right, I run ~~two~~ three monitors and a TV (as well as three sound cards):

I write Windows Audio Software, and anyone who writes code will appreciate the need for at least two monitors. (See NGWave and Virtual DJ Studio). VDJ has Karaoke support, hence the need for a television.

Just now, just for fun, I decided to press PrtScrn to see what a screenshot would look like with my three-screen configuration. Here it is at 25%, click for unnecessarily huge version:

You can see how handy the multi-monitor thing is - web page on one monitor, HTML/PHP source on the other (note Putty on the right, editing this very page in mcedit).

Audio System:
All of this is connected to my audio system. I used to DJ, but I'm taking a break from that. My audio equipment:

Behringer MX1604-A Mixer
Behringer Feedback Destroyer - used only as a 12-band parametric EQ
Crown XLS-202 Amplifier running Bose 901 Series III Speakers (circa 1976)
Kenwood 400W Amp running bandpass subwoofer box (2x12-inch subs)
Telex Pro Wireless Mic
Other misc crap (guitar effects, compressor, crossover...)

A picture of my "studio" (actually a corner of my living room) is below. Click for full-sized version:

For those who noticed, yes, I am running the 901's backwards. I have my resaons...

Overkill for PC speakers, most certainly. I've been known to pop a circuit breaker with the right music (Korn, NIN...) I'm also half-deaf much of the time (what's that ringing sound? :)

Here is a closer view of my home-built DJ Console, which houses my mixer, amps, EQ, etc. It is sitting on top of the subwoofer box (click for larger view):

Note that the Kenwood amp is not rack-mountable, but a couple of hinges, drywall screws, and a cordless drill took care of that...

Linux Box (aka Media Box):
My Linux box serves many purposes. It is a fileserver, gateway/router/firewall, and media center. I wrote the media software myself, using Mplayer for video playback. It runs in a basic 80x25 text mode, but video playback uses the VESA framebuffer. Video playback is extremely smooth and glitch-free. Most people who come over and watch movies never even realize they are watching a computer -- much less a computer that does NOT run Windows :)

The media software is controlled via an ATI Remote, for which I had to write my own Linux driver.

It is connected to my TV (S-Video out from an ATI Radeon 7500 AIW card) and surround sound (via a Griffin iMic USB audio device).

Here is a picture of the setup:

I tried to get a screenshot of the software in action, but Putty doesn't show the line-drawing characters correctly:

The box has been upgraded recently, but I plan to add more RAM shortly:

Pentium-4/Celeron Board (forgot which specific board I'm using)
Celeron 2.0 GHz
512 MB DDR-266
80 GB Maxtor HDD
80 GB Quantum HDD
80 GB IBM/Hitachi HDD
Some CD-RW drive
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 & ATI Remote
Griffin iMic Audio Device

I don't remember off-hand which 80GB drive is which, but two are for video only, and one has my music and base OS crap on it. Sadly, I currenly have NO free space for more video or mp3s, until I do a bit of upgrading...

I think that's about it. It features two network cards, one directly to the DSL modem, the other to the rest of the network (Linksys 5-port Switch). I run iptables, nat, and pppoe and the result is a firewalled connection to the other PCs in the house.

Web Server
I may as well describe my web server too. It hosts a few sites (including this one, of course), and for the most part it just idles; I can't throw enough traffic at it...

Here are the basic specs:

AMD Athlon 2100+
1024 MB RAM (1 GIG!!)
60 GB Hard Disk

Hm, beyond that I'm not sure what else is in this box. I do know that it's serious overkill for my needs, but for the price, it's easily worth it. It is mostly commodity stuff (for example, it has the same RTL8139 network card my Windows box has -- a $15 card), but again, for the price, you can't beat it.

I don't know what the hell I will ever do with a gig of RAM in a web server, but I'm working on finding a way to use it :) I also have some 450 gigs of monthly data transfer, that I can't fathom using with my puny sites... but it's good to know that my sites can handle a Slashdotting if need be... :)

Being anal as I sometimes am, the server runs no unnecessary services. As a result, it truly is just sitting there, doing nothing, most of the time. DNS, MySQL (local only), Apache, Qmail... and that's really about it. I don't do SMTP relaying at all, nor do I have FTP or Telnet running (it's all SSH here)...

DJ and Karaoke Software • Audio Editing Sofware