On Sat, 2005-11-26 at 18:39 -0800, trebejo wrote: > I am hoping to focus the above on a specific thread, and in particular > to broaden the option to include a do-it-yourself scenario. So I'm > going to provide some bytes for the savvy among us to chew on.
Before I bought my first SqueezeBox, I was planning on going with a suitably small box in my main stereo listening room. Granted, this was years ago, but I decided that the SqueezeBox approach with a computer in my basement was the way for me. For many of the reasons you talk about. > Regarding noise issues, if the NAS device is noisy then it defeats the > audiophile raison d'etre of the squeezebox in an obvious way. I don't agree, as I don't see any reason to have the SlimServer box in the same room as my serious stereo. Its next to the furnace, which makes lots of noise on its own in the summer and winter. > The cost of the ReadyNAS barebones is about $600 plus shipping and > taxes. I am certain that for that money one can build a barebone linux > box of greater capabilities. It's been a few years since I've put > together a linux system (Suse 8) and I've never done the headless thing I think you can get a generic whitebox machine for half or a third of that. I bought a serious linux box (I write software for a living, so I wanted very fast) for $400 a couple of months ago. It has a fast AMD CPU, a gig of Ram, a good video card, case, and a 80 GB disk. Going to a 300GB disk would have added maybe $50 to it. I'm not sure what you mean by "headless" I know you mean "doesn't require a monitor and keyboard" But what more specifically do you mean? Specific example, my SlimServer box is untouched for months at a time. Here is an uptime command from it as I type this. 22:59:39 up 160 days, 11:04, 2 users, load average: 0.01, 0.05, 0.07 I do everything I want to do to it remotely, usually from one or two floors away. The machine has a KVM switch (keyboard, video, & mouse) that I used to set it up many months ago. Two way KVMs are cheap and available at your local CompUsa, Fry's, etc. So if you call that headless, it is easy and cheap. If you are really going low cost, you can just plug in the monitor/k/m from your main PC during setup, saving even the $50. Using this approach, you don't have to do anything magic at all. Stick a prefered ISO disk, boot, install and be happy. > Herger's SlimCD to manage a RAID system as well as run the slimserver; > that would be an obvious win wrt what OS to install. I agree with Jack's posting that RAID isn't necessarily what you want. Backup is essential, but RAID isn't clearly the solution. > Now onto the hardware side of things. The linux box should definitely > have room for four hard drives, since RAID 5 hits a sweet spot at that > number. Any mid-tower will hold four or more drives, which you may want even once you decide RAID is not the solution. Just remember two key things: 1) disks run hot and hot disks are more failure prone, 2) disks require power, and low end power supplies are not what you want for reliability. > I don't know if the box should have an additional drive to host the OS > and so forth. I recommend it, as you can just nuke the OS disk and install another one, mount your music disks and you are done. Just this is an operational engineering decision. > RAM is good and cheap and a gigabyte is a nice round number; that's > another $100. Motherboard and cpu together will probably go for about > $200; This will get a far faster machine than a Slimserver requires. > The noise reduction require a refined touch, as one has to travel > inside the computer case looking for specific noise sources and then > invest time, money and elbow grease to diminish or even eliminate them. Only if you put the Slimserver in the listening room. As I have posted elsewhere, the standard fans are cheap and noisy. Spending an extra $5 per fan makes a huge difference. My AMD 3400+ X64 system is very quiet, not silent, but much less noisy than the Dell P3-933 mid-tower that is sitting next to it in my office. > 1. Fan quality makes a big difference; apparently one can invest for > ~$10 rather than ~$3 fans and lose a lot of noise. But I've seen ads > for fans that cost $30+ so I'm still working on this clue. CPU fans that cost about $20 are fine, case fans that cost $15 and have thermal speed controls are about right. Big fans are more expensive but lots quieter at the same CFM than small ones. > 3. If the linux box can be made to run without a VGA card, then that's > an extra fan that doesn't have to run You don't need a high end video card for a SlimServer. A nice fanless, $25 video card is more than enough. It will be way higher than VGA, probably at least 1600x1200x24 > So adding up the tab, we get motherboard, cpu, RAM, and case for about > $400. As I said, I got a fast CPU and 80GB of disks from my local whitebox computer store for $400, and he installed all the hardware and guarenteed it. It also included a DVD burner. > Presumably this setup works better than, say, the ReadyNAS > (albeit in a larger package), but one still has to rtfm and assemble > (or hire someone else to do so, probably for another $100 or so). Anyone can install Mandriva or Ubantu or Mike's SlimServerCD. No need to pay anyone for that. But if you live in the Washington DC area, you can pay me the $100 and I'll do it. > The hard drives then pop in at one's leisure. The current sweet spot > seems to be 400gb (after taking the fixed cost of the box into > account), but the 300gb are pretty much in the same ballpark You need to check speeds, faster drives are much louder. I think paying more than $100 per drive is out of the sweet spot, which is more like 250 GB each. But that is a large library. My "724 albums with 10622 songs by 1193 artists" fits easily in 250GB using FLAC. > To sum up, I'd rather go DIY with the headless linux box for > performance and compatibility/long-term reasons And you can do it for a lot less than your $1300 budget number. If you took my system and added water cooling, you could still be in the $700 range, more if you water cool each drive. I suggest you read the archives about backups. Backing up a terabyte is not trivial and takes a long time. Just copying all the files in one 250GB disk to another, internal to the computer, takes hours. On which OS, the answer is pretty clear to me, you want one of the free, well supported Linux distros. Not to diss the *BSD folks, there are known good things about them, but I think the Linux distros have a more approachable interface for non-hardcore folks. Right now, Knoppix, Ubantu and Mandriva are hot. I'm not a fan of RedHat/Fedora, but YMMV I think you are on the right track, I just am not sure: 1) that really noiseless is cost justified 2) what you mean by headless 3) if RAID will really do what you want. -- Pat http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimserver/slimsoftware.html _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
