[mythtv-users] Building a system from scratch

[Jeff Clowser]

Harry Orenstein wrote:

> I have the ASUS A7V8X-X mobo and have never had any of the VIA
> chipset problems that have been described on this list.  From what I
> can tell, 512MB DDR is the best choice for memory.

I'm narrowing down my "ideal" mythtv system... 

I was looking around for reasonably priced boards, and was looking at 
the ABIT KV7, with 1 PVR-350 and multiple PVR-250's.  This board has 
onboard 10/100 lan, "6-channel AC 97" sound (not sure if this is 
supported in Linux, but I have a couple sound blaster cards laying 
around that I can use if this doesn't work), Ultra DMA 133 (to use for 
an OS hard disk, and maybe a dvd burner), and SATA (for hard disks to 
store video - figure this is the best thing to handle the I/O 
requirements of writing multiple sources at a time with multiple PVR 
inputs).  This board goes for about $80 on newegg.

This board has a Via chipset (VIA KT600 + VT8237).  I'm a bit new to 
this list, so haven't seen the posts referred to above about Via Chipset 
problems - Does anyone know if this board/chipset has any problems with 
MythTV (or underlying dependencies?)

I have an extra 1.8 Ghz AMD proc to use for this - sounds like htis may 
be overkill, but since I already have it...

My plan is to later get Via EPIA M motherboards, and build a couple 
minimyth diskless front ends.  The above system would then be used on a 
primary tv, plus for the tftp (and maybe dhcp) server for these remote 
boxes - figure with all the hardware encoding/decoding, plus high speed 
I/O on the SATA drives, the 1.8ghz proc should be enough.

Does this sound reasonable?

Next problem will be to find a quiet enough case/fans/etc to put the 
main box in :)

 - Jeff