NES Media PC
Whew, well now that exams and that whole Christmas thing is done I have some time to kill and write something here. In the process of cleaning up around the home here I found a rather fantastic relic of the past, an original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). I remember having one but up until now had thought it had gone to video console heaven to join its brethren Commodore 64 and Atari.
However, now what to do with this iconic relic of the 80’s. A Philips screwdriver and 10 screws later showed the NES in all its boxlike glory would make it a great enclosure for something. What just what could that something be? My first thought was to turn it into a hard drive enclosure for regular backups was a decent idea, however, seeing that some more ambitious people on the internet turn it into a retro media PC I decided I wanted to do that too.
So here are my specs for the internals of this experiment:
- Intel DG41MJ MINI-ITX LGA775
A small but flexible motherboard that can handle most of the Intel Dual Core processors (as opposed to just Celeron or Micro processor). It also has 5.1 surround sound and has a high resolution digital out that will give some HD picture quality. Also the capacity to have 8 USB ports serves my purposes well. - Western Digital Scorpio Blue 2.5IN 160GB
Space to put stuff. - OCZ Gold XTC PC2-6400 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-800
Far more RAM than I could ever justify but hey it’s on sale. - Liteon IHOS104 4X BLU-RAY Reader BD-ROM Drive
Blu-Ray is the way of the future I hear.
More to come I will keep this place update as I progress.
– Niels
Nice! I just finished the case today and will post an update on my site in a little bit. The case is going to be on display at the Exploratorium in San Francisco in February. I’m going to try and get a mouse and keyboard ready by then too, but school starts on monday. I love getting a break from school!