it lives … IT LIVES!!!

So my mini-ITX box arrived yesterday. Catherine was out this evening, so I set to building it. Can’t be too hard, I thought …

That was at about 19:30. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to fit all the gubbins a computer needs into a box about half the size of a shoebox. It didn’t help that the Travla C138‘s case fan cable is too short to reach the SP 13000‘s fan connector. It also didn’t help that the DVD adaptor’s audio cable doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen (or have to hand). And it really, really doesn’t help that the volume of internal cables in the box is only very slightly less than the total volume of the case itself; judicious squtcha, squtcha‘ing on the ATA cables was required to get everything in. I can tell you, there’s not an earthly chance of getting a PCI card in there, unless it’s a very tiny one that doesn’t mind getting bent out of shape.

With much apprehension, I turned the system on, and stuck the Ubuntu liveCD in. Wouldn’t you know, it all booted fine:

Sure, the resolution wasn’t great, and the timezone’s wrong, but I was expecting horrible POST feeping at best. All the hardware was found correctly, and the screenshot was transferred by USB key, which automounted to the desktop. Phew!

Thanks to Davey Laporte for the Ubuntu CD. It certainly saved my soy-bacon.