I am very skilled when it comes to computer hardware in it’s various forms. I service all my computers myself thus saving a lot of money, as I’d get charged for parts and labour otherwise, this way I only need to pay for parts.  I am also CompTIA A+ certified.

My main desktop computer was built by myself and has undergone many changes in it’s lifetime, I also have two other homebuilt computers, one of these is in the cupboard and is not functional as it no longer has any RAM and the CPU is dead, the other is the compact base unit for the kitchen computer built by myself and my fiancée during her time here, she actually installed the motherboard into it, as she is just as keen as I am, other parts were done by both of us together.

For more information on the kitchen computer have a look at the page about it which details the progress of it’s build.

I also own 2 Raspberry Pi Model Bs, one of which lives in the kitchen with a camera pointing at my coffee maker in homage to the Trojan Room Coffee Pot webcam, my version is called PMCoffee, another lives inside the housing of a Technika DAB307 radio and is the heart of it as the original electronics died so I converted it to WiFi Internet operation with built in music storage (actually this nearly met with a messy end after the regulator went above normal output and blew a diode on the board that I have removed to restore full functionality, this Pi has been repurposed for use with OpenELEC), check out the Raspberry Pi section for more on the Pi.

As I run this and many other websites from home, I therefore have a server at home.  To begin with the server was, for many years, an IBM ThinkPad T21, however when I relocated my now-closed blog  to the server I found I had outgrown it due to lack of RAM and the ThinkPad would max out at 512MB which, for a server, is not really acceptable, the server is now a dedicated piece of hardware, a Dell PowerEdge SC1425, this had been in use since September 2012 and has done well to keep my sites from being inaccessible due to heavy demand, it is also a rack mountable machine so ideal if I decide to mount it properly in future.

The vast majority of my fixed computers, and my DVB-T2 receiver, are connected using Ethernet cabling, even though some machines are WiFi I am trying to phase out the use of any WiFi on static systems, my laptop, network printer, and the kitchen computer will remain on WiFi, as the laptop is moved around somewhat and I take it out with me sometimes, and the printer and the kitchen computer only have WiFi as an option, in particular the latter although it has an ethernet port running an Ethernet cable is not an option due to the need to drill holes through walls to run it, not something I can do in rented accommodation