(You can read the first part of this project by clicking here.)

All the parts finally came in. I didn't have any trouble getting the system put together. I did have one small issue. The motherboard supports both ATA and SATA drives, but only came with an ATA cable. The drive, being an OEM version, came with nothing, not even screws. So I spent an afternoon dashing all around town looking for a cheap SATA cable.

First I stopped by Best Buy. They had cables but wanted nearly $20 for them! No, Thanks!

Next I stopped by CompUSA, even though I'm boycotting them because of problems I've had with their stupid rebates. They had some for about $16. Still a little pricey.

Then I remembered Gigaparts right down the street. I called them from CompUSA and they said they had one for $12. Sold! I headed down the street. When I got there the fellow said he'd found a SATA cable with right-angle plugs for $6.95! I didn't care what kind of connector it had so I bought it. I've really got to remember that for stuff like that, Gigaparts usually has a better price.

So I had all the parts. I put the system together and "borrowed" a CD-ROM drive from another computer so I could install the software. I went ahead and installed Gentoo Linux on it. It took a while, but I really didn't have any trouble with it. I tried to keep the system as minimalistic as possible, but various things I wanted to install wound up sucking in a whole bunch of stuff. Oh well.

About the time I was finished with the OS install and getting Zoneminder installed, the Spectra 8 video capture card came in. It's a largish card and I had some trouble getting it to install in the case. I wound up having to take some tin snips to the drive cage to make a little room for the corner of the card.

So now the moment of truth had come. I connected the camera and... nothing. Eventually I found how I had to reconfigure the kernel to get the right modules built for the card. Once I did that it worked beautifully!

That's all I have time for now. I'll post again later with some pictures and a more detailed description of my impression with the Spectra 8, Zoneminder, and some hacks I made.