The Finished Product!
Here you can see above the finished product, with Pioneer 16x
slot loading DVD drive (my favourite), front USB and really quite cool power
and reset switches! I name this the "Blue Meanie" which I know was
used before for those Tbird 700 chips that could do a gig -but I felt i was
also an appropriate name for this machine (being blue and rather cool).
The machine works well and does everything I want it to do.
To play DivX's without any skips I had to put the decoder setting to it's
lowest, but I couldn't notice the difference while they were playing. And
everything else it does fine - in fact, I wrote this entire article using
this box.
The most useful thing about this is I can pick it up and put
it straight in front of the TV and plug the tv-out into the tv and it boots
straight up so I can play my DivX/DVD films.
I didn't notice the noise of the system during the films becuase
I lowered the PSU fan to 7v and the CPU fan is almost non existent!
I did find the Suspend To Ram function very useful, as I could
suspend the machine over night and then it's ready for when I next need it
without having to wait for it to boot. On that subject, boot speeds where
very impressive, I never saw the POST screen on my monitor because by the
time the monitor had switched on, the eden had half booted windows!
One thing I was annoyed about was the SPDIF. I was hoping to
be able to plug it into my Cambridge Works speakers and have SPDIF all the
time, but I think it only utilizes digital out when it's an AC3 stream from
DVD's. Dissapointing.
This really is an attractive machine and very functional - it
is also smaller than the Shuttle SFF machines. This is the first time
I have ever done any modding and believe me it won't be the last, so if you
fancy a bit of fun like I had the eden's are a perfect choice. They really
do get your brain thinking about what wierd and wonderful object you could
integrate an eden into. I have another of these boards and don't think for
one minute I'm not going to do anything with it!
Spode
