www.theoldcomputer.com

Hi everyone,

For years I have been thinking about having a true gameroom. Well, a small gap of oppertunity has appeared, so I'm diving right into it (damn that sounds dirty but okay).

We have two bedrooms in our house, one obvious being the 'master' bedroom and the other one stations my drumkit and a shitload of bags, junk, etcetera. I have two closets (open) against the wall, and they are stuffed with things right up to the roof, because we have too little storage room available unfortunately.


(plz do comment on stuff you would like to have )

Problem: while drumming or chilling, the room looks really messy because of the filled up closets.
Solution: hang a curtain in front of it.



I happened to have a left over pair of red (yay) curtains laying around, so I will be haning those up right in front of the closets. Next, I will find a place for the beamer. After having bought a beamer one month ago for trade actually, I thought; "why not keep it?", so that's what I'll do.



My current last few pennies have gone into buying a nice room-filling projectionscreen. There was a sale for a few types of screens online and one looked like the perfect deal for this room. The wall that it will have to 'cover' is 210cm wide. So I called the selling company asking if the screen -including mounting kit- is smaller than 210cm wide and they told me it is.



This baby got delivered yesterday at our neighbours; yay! but after opening the box it appeared the total width is 218cm.. OMFG.. GJ baxshop.nl !

Before bursting into tears, I looked for alternatives to sending it back to the store. There appears to be one solution which I will make a photograph of tonight:



So far the update, many idea's are currently boiling in my head, waiting to be unleashed upon the room!

So far so good!

What's up next:
* Nice place to sit
* Perhaps hanging up the beamer (30cm back for full screen image)
* Finding a simple receiver (anyone got one for sale or trade?).

The red curtains make it look like an old time cinema already. Cool.

That's pretty freakin cool.

Update:

Yesterday I bought a 2nd hand awesome stereo amplifier that will replace my (almost new) receiver.
The surround receiver will go to the game-room!

Tonight and tomorrow I'm planning on doing:
* hanging up beamer
* moving curtain rails
* hanging up curtains on other rails (at other window)
* disconnecting receiver and subwoofer
* finding the right cables and use the long subwoofer cable as rca-video cable
* placing the new amplifier (living room)
* placing the receiver and drill holes in the cabinet for the cables
* switch the PC videocard with the one in my arcade cabinet, so that the PC can be used for HD video
* placing the consoles, cd-player and computer
* placing the speakers, connecting them
* connecting everything
* hangup the 'roll-down-curtain' at the near-screen-window
* tidy up the cables
* fill holes in the ceiling
* pull screen down
* rent a movie
* anyone want to check out a movie?

Sounds like another one of your most excellent plans. As always i will expect a running commentry and lots of pictures. keep it going.

Hi all,

First of all: thank you for all the nice comments!

Been busy the last few weeks with several projects, including building a cabinet under the stairs for some extra storageroom.

But ofcourse the main (and most fun project is the gameroom / music studio).

Let's start with some hardware that I'm currently using:
7.1 Surround receiver (ofcourse):



2.0 Front speakers, currently B&W v201i. Got them cheap including the wallmounts,
but it appears the tweakers have died on both speakers.


Might be replacing them with some very nice B&W 601's:


JBL SCS200.5 surround 5.1 Speakerset:


Beamer you've seen (Samsung SP-M251)


Computer, homebrew:

• Intel Celeron E3300
• 8gb ddr3
• Ati HD4350 - HDMI & DVI
• Simple 5.1 card with digital coax out
  
• -- wanted: Oxygen Midi Keyboard 61 keys
• -- wanted: M-audio external audiocard with multiple connection possibilities

First of all, one of the cabinets we had in our room was just too messy!


It was from IKEA so it was quite easily torn apart. Most parts were really worn out, so I will throw it away.


This is were the hardware will be placed (behind the curtain, but just under the bottom edge of the screen).


Received the brand-new beamer ceiling-mount. It's the cheapest I could find (€20). Unpacked it and put all the trash "nice and tidy" in a box:



After some pushing and pulling (wasn't sure if it was vertically adjustable at all.. luckily it is for about 12 degrees), I've hung it in the right place and angle. Had to do some "dry testing" first, before mounting the beamer to the ceiling mount. When I had some rough spots drawn on the ceiling, I mounted the beamer to the mount and turned it on to determine the exact placement position. After drawing spots on the ceiling where the mount were to be placed, I started drilling holes in the ceiling. When that was done, I connected the mount and beamer together and hung it up; yay!




Then I started cleaning up the closet.. for as far as that was possible. And I managed to create about two 'planks' of empty space, which I immediately filled up with game stuff .


It doesn't look so tidy anymore now, but will tidy it up all at the end, when I'm going to do some massive cable management.

Also the PC will be placed there:


Since everything will be behind curtains most of the time, the hardware (PC & receiver especially) will become HOT. So I had to find some extra cooling for the PC. Found a nice big 6 inch cooler in an old pc cab I had laying around. There were some nice small holes in the ("new") pc's sidepanel, so I just bolted the fan onto the panel. If it ever starts to rumble anoyingly, I will put some rubber rings in between to fix that.


So far so good. Now for a nice place to sit. Got a part of our outside bench and brought it upstairs (damn it is large an lumb). Put the corresponding pillows on it and hung over a nice kind of sack for the remote controllers.



Now for a nice idea. Since I will be replacing my drumkit with an electronic version (which will be placed in the corner), it will be a lot easier to do some recording. Because of that it would be very usefull if I could hang up a monitor there which is connected to the second videoport on the PC.

Step 1:


Step 2-5:


You can also see I hung up some white curtains that my dear mother made at the right length.
Ty mom!

Since it appeared my almost brand new Denon receiver doesn't convert NES/SNES composite to HDMI (it does with other 'normal' composite resources), I had to get an extra composite cable, which went from the Denon composite out to the beamer. Btw, it appears this issue is common for most receivers.

Luckily I found a 2nd hand cable at the local secondhand store for a massive 1 euro. Had an extention cable laying around for the subwoofer, which I could combine for the composite video .


The subwoofer:


Next step was to hang up the front speaker mounts:


The mounts, which can easily be placed on the rear of any wooden speaker:


Done here (in the most left corner):


Final result so far:



Right speakers is a tad lower *cough*

To do:
* Get new working front speakers
* Make photographs of the rear speakers (yes they're there ).
* Cable management
* Getting the PC to work on both screens
* Connecting drumkit
* Make a nice drum/recording corner

See you soon guys!

Hot Trout wrote:Sounds like another one of your most excellent plans. As always i will expect a running commentry and lots of pictures. keep it going.

Hope that's enough comments and pictures for you?

Excellent pictures and comments. I have a pair of B&W v201i in my garage. Makes me wonder if I should bring them back into the house. Are they worth anything these days?

Hot Trout wrote:Excellent pictures and comments. I have a pair of B&W v201i in my garage. Makes me wonder if I should bring them back into the house. Are they worth anything these days?

Hi HT, here in Holland they change owner for about €40 euro a pair, at least. I've bought them earlier for 25, but it appears the tweakers are done for on both speakers. Going to sell them.. so if anyone is interested in a fix-up pair?

This morning my colleage arrived with a pair of DM601's I saw online. He picked them up nearby his home and, darn, they're nice (if I may say so myself). It was a pair for *only* €75. A bargain.

Added a just made photograph to the post .