The new DVD player for the MythTV box turned up on Friday… and turned out to exhibit the same problem: blinking lights, but no action. After disconnecting the SATA cable and the power cable a hundred times, swapping those cables with those of the hard drive, and disconnecting and reconnecting random leads from the motherboard, I did get the DVD drive tray to slide open once. I put in the FC4 installer, rebooted and got a single line of the boot display to show up, after which the boot failed, citing the DVD drive once again.

A couple more attempts at booting the machine ensued, then the video card started to scream at me that its power cord wasn’t connected. This was accompanied by a subtle, yet distinct air of electrical burning. Somehow — I really have no idea why — the video card has now decided to ally itself with the other rebellious hardware and turn to shit in my hands. It thinks it has no power, even though the cord is properly connected. A new cord and a different socket on the power supply fail to remedy the situation.

At this point, I have to suspect the motherboard after all. Things are breaking in such strange and unpredictable ways, and I’m really not that clumsy that I can realistically blame myself for each new problem that arises. But what next? Order a replacement motherboard and hope that everything magically just works? I’ve poured so much time, energy and money into this project already. It looks like I now need a new video card, too.

No, that’s it for me, I think. The whole project has worn out my patience, so I’m shelving it for now. The working pieces of hardware will become spares for some future computer (since they’re all either incompatible with or superfluous for my other machines), but essentially it’s a lot of money down the drain at the moment.

The whole exercise has left a nasty taste in my mouth. This is the very last time I attempt to build a new PC from the ground up. Unless one has multiple spares of every part on hand with which to test and rule out causes, it’s just not worth the potential grief.

I’m sticking to software from now on; it’s what I’m good at.

The new drive for the MythTV box arrived today and works! Well, let’s not be hasty; the BIOS recognises it. I won’t know whether it truly works until I actually try to put an operating system on it.

To that end, I thought I’d try to start the FC4 install from a bootable DVD. FC5 comes out next Wednesday, but this would at least tell me that the system was finally ready to go from a hardware perspective. I pressed on the eject button of the DVD player to open the tray and… nothing. The LED on the front of the drive blinked a few times, but that was it.

After searching the Internet, I came across a document describing Plextor’s blink codes. It describes a different drive to the one I have, but Plextor’s blink codes seem to be the same across all models.

First of all, I was getting three blinks, which means ejection or loading error.

After manually ejecting the tray, inserting a DVD and then closing the tray, I then get eight blinks, which means spindle failed. None of the suggestions on Plextor’s site provided any relief.

Why me? Why me? I ask.

I’ve already had to send back the TV tuner card and order a replacement. That arrived today, together with the new hard drive. Tomorrow, I’ll have to send back the first hard drive and now also the DVD drive. More bloody delays and frustration ahead. All of these hardware problems would be bad enough if I had bought the parts locally, but having to send stuff back through the post is very tedious and time-consuming.

I’m beginning to wonder whether a working MythTV box will ever see the light of day by way of my hands.

I’ve ordered a new hard drive to replace the useless article that I couldn’t cajole into action yesterday. Let’s hope the new one shows more signs of life. I hope it’s not just a case of some obscure incompatibility between the drive and the motherboard, because I’ve ordered the exact same model of drive again.

I’ve also ordered a new TV tuner card to replace the broken one I had to send back.

The package has already been despatched, so I may be able to report more as early as tomorrow. Until then, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the new hard drive will actually spin up.

After putting the bits of our future MythTV box back together, the system now powers up, but the SATA hard drive is not detected by the motherboard. Yawn. The SATA DVD drive, on the other hand, is recognised, so I tried the hard drive with that device’s cables, but to no avail.

With no other SATA computer in the house, I have no idea whether it’s a duff drive or some other, more obscure problem. There are plenty of stories out there about the Seagate ST3500641AS not working with Macs, due to the use of Spread Spectrum Clocking (SSC), but this isn’t a Mac, of course.

It looks like I’m going to suffer another hardware-induced delay while I get this figured out.