FoxBoom!

In Mac OS, if you’re trying to mount a shared folder from a Windows Vista machine and you see “The volume ‘whatever’ could not be mounted.” then it could be that you haven’t assigned any guest permissions on that folder. In Vista, right-click on that folder and select “Share…”, then in the “Choose people” combo, pick “Guest” and add ‘em.

If you’ve mounted the folder, but when you try to copy a file into it you see “You may need to enter the name and password for an administrator on this computer to change the item names ‘whatever’.” then you might not have actually entered your real username. In Vista, right-click on the folder and select “Properties…”, then click the “Security” tab. In the “Group or user names” list, look for your Windows account name; the username you need to enter when you mount the folder is in brackets after your name. So, in the list, if you see “AdminVixen (VIXENBOX\fox)” and your Windows account name is “AdminVixen” then your username when you mount the folder is “VIXENBOX\fox”.

And once, I mounted the folder but files I copied into it disappeared immediately. I suspect I put the wrong password in, but I’m not sure.

Also, if you want to install a VNC server on your Vista machine, UltraVNC works a treat for me. RealVNC doesn’t.

AND NOW YOU KNOW.

So, the plan for today is to setup Vista on this new PC, set up some shared folders for me and Spirit to drop our media into, and have Windows Media Player monitor those folders so our Xbox-es can pick them up through the Windows Media Centre interface.

Then maybe in a couple of months, I’ll get a Linksys Media Center Extender DMA2100 for the living room, and rebuild the media server as a much, MUCH lower-power box with a terrabyte of storage. That should keep me going for a while.

So I grabbed a second hand Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard off Spirit to build into a little media server for the PCs and Xbox-es around the house.

One the first day, I plugged DVI out into my TV’s HDMI, and nothing happened. Turns out my TV couldn’t sync down low enough. Poop.

On the second and third days, right after the POST, we were getting “Keyboard is locked out — unlock the key.”

Well, I checked for shorts, I reset the CMOS, I pulled the battery out. And just now, I figured it out. The keyboard wake-up jumper (KBPWR1) was missing. I plugged it back into the default (pins 1 + 2), and it’s done!

With thanks to page 2-15 of the A7N8X manual.

I think “unlock the key” is gonna be my new motivational slogan.