Last week I issued a caution about Squeeze possibly causing kernel panics.  Well, it turns out that Squeeze wasn’t the root cause, but it probably just made my problem more evident.  If you want to give Squeeze a shot, go for it!  Don’t let my experience scare you off.

The problem was that one of my 4GB SODIMMs was bad, and that was what was causing all the kernel panics.  I had previously tried testing my RAM with TechTool Pro, but it didn’t find any issues.  A friend of mine suggested that I tried Memtest OS X.  Low and behold, it found issues left and right!  I tried removing and swapping sticks and narrowed it down to one specific stick.  The RMA is in and while I’m temporarily down to 5GB of RAM (long story) instead of 8GB, I can at least run stably now.

It was decided that last night I would attempt to upgrade our HTPC with some parts we had laying around.  This would be a combination of cannibalization from machines that haven’t been touched since we got our Macs, and some parts that had been given to us by friends that were untested.

Here’s how the install went:

• Install motherboard
• Find out that a metal tab from the backing plate was blocking the PS/2 ports
• Remove motherboard
• Install motherboard
• Find out that metal tabs from the backing plate were blocking the Ethernet ports
• Remove motherboard
• Install motherboard
• Install hard drives
• Find out that hard drives blocked the power connector on the motherboard
• Remove hard drives
• Move hard drives to alternate mounting locations
• Find out that alternate hard drive carrier hits video card
• Bend the crap out of the hard drive carrier to make it fit
• Find out that the hard drive carrier now blocks the power connector on the video card
• Bend the crap out of the hard drive carrier the OTHER way
• Cable up all the power and internal cables
• Hit power button
• Power breaker trips

*sigh*

I was having fun with the install, up to a point.  Now I’m wondering why I didn’t just go to the Apple store and pick up an Apple TV for $200 and call it a day.  Right now I have no HTPC until I get something worked out.  Plan B is to take some other known working parts that should work and get it going that way.  Plan C is to start throwing stuff.

Once I get everything running, the plan is to get Windows 7 on there to use the Windows Media Center.  I’ll post reviews of Windows 7 as a HTPC if/when I get it running!

For anyone in desktop support, this tool may be extremely valuable to give you detailed hardware information.