On Sun Jan 07, 2001 at 01:35:49PM -0700, Stefan Srdic wrote:
[...]
> > Anyone done this or am I asking the impossible? Heck, it might be
> > impossible to get Linux installed on this thing... I haven't even
> > tried that yet (talk about getting way ahead of myself). Anyways,
> > it's a weekend project and I was wondering if someone had an
> > experience with something like this so I'm not beating a dead horse if
> > someone else has a magic recipe or knows of some programs that will do
> > what I want.
> >
> > Thanks muchly in advance.
>
> You'll be able to play MP3's on the Pentium CPU since it has a math
> co-prossecor, but unless you've got a DMA capable hard drive and lots of
> RAM the songs will play back real choppy. You need to first load the
> selected song into memory and then have the CPU read it from there.
> Fortunetly you have 48MB of RAM, so creating a RAMdisk or 6-8MB should
> not be a problem. I dont know how, but you'll need to write a script or
> use a program that accomplishes that.
Well, it's a P60 (maybe a P90, not sure), so I'm not too worried.
Should be more than enough to play mp3's nicely under Linux.
> You can get SVGA (interlaced, multiple refresh rates) to TV (30
> frames/sec interlaced) converters, I have used a few when reparing
> computer monitors. There pretty pricey though -> 800 bucks CND+ I would
> recomend an ATI All in Wonder to view xmms onto your TV, but its AGP
> based architecture... Maybe you should do some research and try to find
> an PCI based video card which supports TV out and is also supported
> under Linux.
Whoah! $800!! That's definately not going to happen. The problem is
this machine has only two PCI slots (shared with ISA) and two ISA
slots. No AGP. I'd have to find a PCI or ISA video card to do the
trick, since one of my PCI slots is taken up with the 10/100 nic and
the sblive would take the other.
> I'm still using my old SoundBlaster 16 ISA to play music with, it does
> 16bit 44,100 KHz stereo which is all you'll need to play MP3's. I think
> that you'll notice more sound degregation from bad cabling or audio
> connections :-D
Really? Maybe I should find an ISA SB16 and use the other PCI slot
for a video card (assuming I can turn off the onboard video).
> In my opinion, you'd be better off using a text-based version of Linux
> with a text-based MP3 player. You could then control the player through
> the keyboard. You could even program a few macros into the keypad to
> accomplish basic task like play/forward/backward/stop etc...
I don't mind text-based. I was thinking of mpg123 anyways, or splay.
With the remote keyboard someone else mentioned, it could work, if I
can get the video to go the TV (this sounds like it'll be the hardest
part, or the most expensive).
Like you said, a little more research... having only two PCI slots
limits me somewhat. Oh well... I think I should be able to do it
easily enough, but it'll be interesting... Thanks for the ideas!
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