One could easily say that if I wanted a media center box, I could have just dragged Blastoise over here. Except I like having dual monitors, not to mention there are things that Blastoise can do better than Yggdrasil. Blastoise and Dinah have been off for the past few days so I could make myself break in the newcomer. :P

As far as oomph goes… well, technically Iggy IS superior to Blastoise. 3 GHz vs. Blastoise’s 2.2, 1GB video card vs. Blastoise’s 512mb (but Blastoise’s is gaming-grade)… the old man is, numerically, only really lacking in RAM and that gets fixed in January. However, Blastoise is preferred for gaming because I don’t have to crank up text so I can read stuff and he has an actual mouse (albeit with a broken scrollwheel). If it’s something that isn’t text-heavy, Iggy will suffice.

though it can’t be denied that WoW and CoH are nothing short of drool-inducing on an HDTV…

I may look into getting a more appropriate keyboard to use on Iggy… at the very least, something backlit. The Logitech diNovo looks really nice…

Iggy is OMFG generous with the USB ports… potentially. His mobo has four on the rear, the case provides an additional two on the front… but his mobo has 3 more pin blocks for USB things, so if I really wanted to I could put in 3 mods that could give me a crapton of USB ports. o_O

What Iggy truly reigns at, and the reason he exists, is video playback. SD, HD, any format you could think of… he runs it, and it is HAWT. (Yes, this even includes YouTube!) Well, of course it is, he’s hooked up to a bloody HDTV! And this is on a VGA connection, though I could plunk down some coin and get an HDMI adapter (because like hell am I going to use the one on his mobo, that would involve giving up my GeForce for onboard Radeon). Despite being capped at 2-channel sound due to TV speakers, sound isn’t bad either. But, then again, considering there are 3 easily-provoked bulldogs downstairs, maybe it’s a good thing Iggy lacks the full surround setup…. bass triggers CACOPHONY OF WOOF, and that is bad.

I’ve Painter installed on here and my workspace imported from Blastoise (I didn’t know I could do that, up until now I was reconstructing my toolbox every time I reinstalled or configured a new unit) but I’ve yet to actually draw anything yet. I suspect Blastoise may still end up being favored for Instant Ramen because I’m so used to dual monitors, but I gotta try at least once on Iggy, if only to see how an HDTV affects things…

On that note, very soon I’ll be starting on the 2009 Snowscheme pieces– since I ran out of time last year, it looks like a Deeum+Baby Garm piece will be first.

ALSO:
Phantasy Star Zero or as I still call it, Lunar in SPAAAAAAAACE.
I has it! Got it for $23 after eCerts and free shipping.
Sega brought in one of my favorite character designers for this one (hence all the “Lunar in Space” jokes) so unlike PSU you will never hear me bitch about lolified costume designs and such. Kubooka has come a loooong way since Lunar, and for the better, and I think he might have slipped in nods to Gundam and Tales of the Abyss, bwahahaha. XD (seriously, a lot of the male CASTs look like mini-Gundams, and I coulda sworn I saw short-haired Luke and Natalia’s hairstyles in here… and RAmarl uniforms look very, VERY much like Jade’s clothes, hah)
ANYWHO, because I’m sure some want to know: I rolled Blastoise (HUcast), Dinah (HUcaseal) and Leslie (RAmarl). Poke on the AIM or what have you if you want friend code-ness, I know LF will. :P

And now I shall nom on pringles while watching Craig Ferguson. >_>

Well, no, he doesn’t, but I am reminded of why I probably should have stuck Yggdrasil on LAN rather than wireless-n. My router tends to drop its wireless radio every so often until either it realizes something is wrong and reboots itself (usually within a couple hours of wireless radio dropping) or unless I go downstairs and reboot the router myself (because when wireless radio drops, I also can’t remote into the router and reboot from there). He’s going Gigabit LAN mode in January at the latest, I only have him on wifi for now because it was the cheapest option at the time, and I can always hold onto his wireless-n stick to be reused on another machine later on. ;P

Anywho… old man box is otherwise awesome. He’s loading up on music and such from Blastoise first, then I’ll copy over the games. It will be interesting to see how Yggdrasil runs games (he is certainly capable of it, packing a 9500GT after all… even though Blastoise is probably much better), but as far as video and such, he is a badass old guy. He ESPECIALLY benefits from Windows Media Center, particularly the Netflix instant view plugin. Running that on an HDTV is the next best thing… no, BETTER than having a Roku box. >:D

The only annoyance aside from the wifi is that most text is a little hard to read from where I sit, but that is easily fixed by forcing Yggdrasil to render text bigger– something I’ve never had to do on any other machine for obvious reasons.

Also like Blastoise, Yggdrasil has a cute beep that he makes on bootup. Typical for machines with MSI mobos. It’s sorta like how Samsung TVs have their 8-bit-sounding beeps that are reminiscent of the original GameBoy or, more amusing, the old Konami sound. XD

I thought my HDTV had picture-in-picture but apparently it does not… HOWEVER, slapping the Slingbox client on Yggdrasil makes for an acceptable workaround. True, it has a few seconds delay because of the network, but I can still fake picture-in-picture so I can still watch TV while doing other stuff on him. >:D

Yggdrasil booted! Yay!
Because Microsoft is a bunch of tards about using upgrade media on virgin drives, Iggy has to do the “double-install” workaround so he’ll activate. Given how much of a pain he was to just turn ON, this is acceptable >_>; Once his OS checks out, I’ll load him up with the stuff that makes him awesome. >:D (Painter, Hamachi, VLC, WoW, etc.)

He went 64-bit, by the way. He might struggle a little until January, but I’ma crank him up to 4GB. (And Blastoise to 8!)

So I couldn’t write off the entire day as being a crock because of lame-o front panel wiring blah, I went and cut higher-res individual pieces of the Avatars from that earlier group shot.

The wonky thumbnails? Blame Gallery2 (the server software for on-site Instant Ramen Sketchbook). >_>

Taking another crack at Yggdrasil’s FP wiring tomorrow. Hopefully it will end in me being hideously bored while waiting for him to patch stuff (also pizza).
For now, I’ll fall asleep to disaster flicks. >_>;

Seriously, system building would be so much easier if front panel wiring for Power/Reset switches and such were done like their front panel USB/Firewire cousins– lump them all into one head and enforce a standard layout for the pins rather than break apart the wires and leave us punks second-guessing if we transposed or inverted the wire placement.

…yeah, I think that makes it pretty clear that Iggy did not boot again. Bleh. I don’t feel like cracking him open YET AGAIN today to figure out where I botched it (even though I literally had the manual in the other hand) and it’s already so late, so I’ll just wait until tomorrow.

Raiding CBS’s stash of Craig Ferguson monologues and such makes Yoshi the Computer Monster not so >:(. Maybe I should have episodes run when I crack open boxes. For the lulz!