Going Green: Amplifier Trigger for my PC

Here's how to automatically turn on & off an external audio amplifier with your PC...

For audio in my new office, I have a 1000-watt Rotel RMB-1075 5-channel THX-certified amplifier that's hooked up to a pair of extremely capable Hales Revelation Three speakers. I connected the output on my computer audio card to the pre-amp, and voila! listening to music on my PC from my 120 gigabytes of music is a delightful experience.

Using a Kill-a-Watt meter, I found that the amp consumes 80 watts of power whenever it's on. So while in general, I just turn it on and off when I come in and exit, I remembered that it has an "external trigger" on the back. I wondered if I could somehow have the PC turn the amp on and off automatically.

After a few Google search revisions, the search for "trigger pc audio amplifier" found this excellent article:

turning on power amp via pc -12v
http://www.avforums.com/forums/computer-systems/396700-turning-power-amp-via-pc-12v.html

Fan extension cable (for connecting to the fan header/supply on the mobo):
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=37058

It's simple enough: take a 12V source off your PC (in this case from a connector on the motherboard fan), wire this up to a female 1/8" plug (which is attached to a hole on a chassis plate), then just run a standard male-to-male 1/8" cable out to the amplifier's "trigger in" port.

I will try this and post results when I have them.

The Zen of MP3 and other stories

Still struggling to get my 8,000+ music library synced to the newly endowed 120GB Zen jukebox... although it got through about 6600 of the tracks, WMP experienced an i/o timeout or something.

Dennis Burton's new Develop Using .Net blog:
http://developusing.net/

A good treatise on multi-booting OS's. Clears up the confusion between primary, extended, and logical hard drive partitions. Boot loaders as well.
http://www.vsubhash.com/writeups/multiboot_os.asp

PC World: Avoid Static Damage to Your PC
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,82184-page,1/article.html

"Static electricity is much more common than you might think... Walk across that rug and touch a grounded metal object, and the voltage can be in the 10,000-to-12,000-volt range.... But for PC upgrades, the important thing to remember is that while a static shock must be 3500 to 4000 volts before you can feel it, it's the voltage below that level that is common, and insidious. It's entirely possible that you'll open up your PC, plug in an add-in card or some RAM, never have any sensation of static, and still have zapped the electronics. That's because the integrated circuits can be damaged or destroyed by static voltages as low as 400 volts."

"What's worse is that the component you installed may appear to be fine, but days, weeks, or months later your PC may lock up or start acting strangely... it's essential that PCs be unplugged when you work with them."

Also:
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/static-hard-drive/

http://www.build-your-own-cheap-computer.com/static-electricity.html

http://www.google.com/search?q=static+damage+computer+components+hard+drive&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

More storage tech...

Bicameral day... having firmware issues with the Zen Jukebox after failing to sync my library with it in a number of ways (WMP 10, NotMad). Tried updating the firmware to "Plays for Sure" and that for sure didn't play -- the Nomad boots into Rescue Mode and the computer won't recognize it any more to upgrade the firmware.

On the storage side of things, still trying to figure out whether I should invest in SCSI or SATA, as well as whether to buy a new box (e.g. with faster CPU, SATA RAID built-in, etc).

On storage: AnandTech's Server Guide Part 2, which explains seek time vs. latency, as well as compares a SATA drive with a SCSI drive:
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2859

FireWire vs. USB 2.0:
http://www.cwol.com/firewire/firewire-vs-usb.htm

Swapping out hard drives

The Zen JukeBox hard drive upgrade to 120 GB was as simple as pie... syncing my entire collection to it now...

Regarding upgrading my lowly 36 GB SCSI drive:

Swapping your board without so much as a reinstall
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/77909774/m/1400925745

http://www.mostlycreativeworkshop.com/Article11.html

How to replace the motherboard on a computer that is running Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, or Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;824125

Upgrading my Creative Zen Jukebox

Found out that I could upgrade my 40GB Zen Jukebox Xtra to 80, 100, or more GB via published "hacks."

http://www.aoaforums.com/forum/general-hardware-discussion/36570-upgrading-your-creative-zen-xtras-hard.html
http://monkeybum.pierceitshop.co.uk/2007/05/upgrading-30gb-zen-xtra-to-60gb.html
http://home.mchsi.com/~sallad/zen/tutorial.html

Bought a 120GB WD Scorpio for $70 + shipping from NewEgg.com:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136130