I am running an EPIA M1000 and am very happy with it. It is an ITX form
factor. Has everything you are talking about. VGA, SVideo out, Analog
audio out (and digital out too!), LAN, USB, Firewire, IR, 1000mhz CPU...the
whole deal. Running standard TV resolutions I am running about 40% CPU at
playback. Since the CPU does SSE so I think the CPU is greatly relieved of
heavy lifting. (MMX doesn't help you do video (integer math)...I think
3dnow does since it is a floating point accelerator)
M1000 MB+CPU (glued on) = $150
or I bet you can easily get by with ML800 MB+CPU = $100
512mb DDR = $50
80gig Seagate 2bel HD (if you are lazy like me) = $50
(Sweet very tiny case) Morex Cubid 3688 = $90 (although ITX will go in
FlexATX, MicroATX or ATX case if you don't mind bigger)
Pictures don't do this case justice:
http://www.aone.zen.co.uk/imagesproduct/miniitx/large/csmorcupid3688b.jpg
...Yes it takes a laptop DVD drive (or none)...this thing is tiny. I am
pretty sure this case gives you 1 full height PCI slot; it has a rise to
turn the card sideways...but don't quote me on that.
When shopping for an EPIA make sure you know what the back panel looks like.
There are a zillion flavors and many don't have SVideo. (Every one has LAN,
Audio, USB...etc)
This thing runs so will I need to make it my main front end and move my
current backend/frontend to the garage or something. The Digital Audio +
SVideo are perfect for the tv room with a "real" amp. I don't think they
would make a great backend unless you have an MPEG2 capture card and
transcode it down later (non-real-time).
Todd
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack Trout" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users@mythtv.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 20, 2005 12:30 AM
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Barebone myth tv nodes?
On 8/20/05, Robert Denier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Has anyone seen or figured out the lowest cost way to get a bare mythtv
node up? I was thinking of setting up myth around the house and what
I'm looking for is something like
1.5GHZ + cpu
Integrated sound
Integrated video with tv out on motherboard
Integrated network
All of the previous need to work with myth obviously, including doing
NFS booting via the network.
In a perfect world it would be a tiny case as well, but somehow I
suspect to get all these things the price might get more expensive.
A shuttle or Asus Pundit might be possibilities, but both were more
expensive than what I had in mind. If anyone sees some refurbished
motherboards that are decent that might be idea. The sticking points
seem to be getting the tv-out to work as well as the nfs booting off the
network.
-Robert
Well Robert, I was tired of sitting in the basement to watch all my
recorded shows and such, so I built an inexpensive frontend only
system. now its not yet as quiet as I like, I am still contemplating
how I am going to fix that either make the system diskless, or just
find a quiet hard drive. Heres what I have done and my costs,
I did blow money on an ebay auction for a processor, I tried using the
livecd Knoppmyth for a frontend, and it didnt seem up to speed, and
have tried on my laptop which is a p3 850 with 512mb ram, and it wasnt
either, so I started bidding on ebay, when I thought that I might have
better luck just installing fedoracore on it, and running it from the
hard drive instead of the cd, might improve my chances, but the bid I
placed on ebay didnt get outbid before I figured out that with the
733, I could play divx movies, and live and recorded tv encoded from
pvr250s I hope that down the line when I start playing with mame and
the like, the extra 266mhz will help in some way.. I recently got my
remote setup, and the wife is watching movies on it as I speak,
and I was worried about tvout, especially as this machine only has
PCI, which I also didnt think about during the purchasing process,
especially because I already had a fanless GF4 ti4200 AGP, but the
very nice thing is with the 7124 nVidia drivers and this MX4000 TVout
was as simple as making the svideo/composite the only connected
monitor adapter.
Dell GX110 Small form factor
733mhz p3 (upgraded to p3 1ghz)
128megs pc133
10gig hard drive
floppy
cdrom
onboard nic
2x pci slots
onboard video (intel 810)
Cost...... 89.99
+ 6.62 Tax
+ 16.00 2x8$ computer show admission
= 112.61 Total cost of aquistion
nVidia GF MX4000 PCI New from Newegg
Cost + S/H 35.99
Intel Pentium 3 1ghz processor Used from Ebay
Cost + S/H 30.50
ATI Remote Wonder RF w/reciever USB
Cost + S/H 30.50
Current running cost 209.6
Parts Used from scrap pile in house
Generic Stick of PC133 Ram
CMedia Sound Card (the system I bought without checking, did not have
onboard sound installed, this card has spid/f out anyway, although not
enabled as of yet)
KeyBoard and Mouse
regular DVD Rom *
Fedora Core 3 dvd **
(* the small form factor case use all normal componets except for a
modified laptop style optical drive, so during OS Install the case was
left open to use a desktop dvdrom because I hate switching disks
during an OS install, and I already had a burned copy of FC3 on DVD)
(** this DVD was downloaded legally from the Fedora Core community
using Bittorrent. Fedora Core was chosen for 2 reasons, My previous
familiarity of RedHat, and Jarod Wilsons and AxelThimms excellent
instructions and binary support of that platform)
Parts not required to complete but to look nice
Small form factor PS/2 or USB Keyboard preferably with intergrated
pointing device for troubleshooting and web browsing
(currently using full sized black keyboard, and a laptop mini ps2
trackball)
small under shelf/desk keyboard tray to conceal connected keyboard
YMMV
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