Building a Home Media Centre with XBMCbuntu – Part 1

In this blog post, I will be documenting my journey of building a home media centre using the HP Proliant Microserver and the XBMCbuntu operating system. The hardware for my media centre arrived from Ebuyer, consisting of the HP Proliant Microserver, replacement DIMMs to upgrade the RAM to 8GB, and a Sapphire Radeon HD5450 Graphics card.

The first step after unpacking the boxes was to open up the server and fit the graphics card and replace the memory. As I had not come across one of these Microservers before, I found the HP website an invaluable source of information on how to dismantle the case. The motherboard slides out easily once the front of the unit is opened and some cables are disconnected.

I removed the full-height backplane from the new graphics card and fitted the two half-height ones. One has DVI and HDMI, while the second has VGA. Although the VGA is optional, I decided to leave it in place as I don’t have anything else to fill the second slot on the motherboard. Next, I removed the 2GB DIMM and replaced it with two 4GB DIMMs. Although I’m not expecting this box to eat 8GB in its current role, it made sense to upgrade all the way now rather than needing more RAM later.

The next step was to slide the motherboard back into the case, making sure the backplanes of the graphics card went into the appropriate gap in the rear of the case. This was a little tricky with the free-floating VGA one, but with patience and the use of my little finger, I managed to get it into place. Finally, the door and lid of the case were put back on, and the unit was ready to power up and install the operating system.

In the next part of this blog post, I will cover the installation of the XBMCbuntu operating system and the media creation process using the great instructions on the XBMC wiki. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of this project! Copyright © IT SHOULD JUST WORK. All Rights Reserved.