[mythtv-users] Backend with really crappy hardware

[Kalle Pokki]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, Ed Lea wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 01:17:29PM +0300, Kalle Pokki wrote:
>> I just realised I have an old 66 MHz 486 machine with 64 MB memory in my
>> storage room. Has anyone successfully run the backend with such a slow
>> machine? I don't intend to run an X server or really anything else than
>> what is absolutely necessary with that box. I do have two DVB tuners but
>> just writing the data streams to disk shouldn't take too much cpu.
>
> I tried a whle ago with a 120Mhz Pentium, about that much RAM and  a
> Nova-t card. It was having none of it.
>
> I can't remember exactly what was wrong, bandwidth somewhere meant I
> couldn't push the data from the card onto the hard drive fast enough. It
> could have been to do with the hard drive of course, but I remember it
> not working at all well.

Maybe this could really also be a problem, as the 10-year old IDE 
controllers hardly support the latest DMA transfer modes. Which makes me 
wonder if the BIOS could also have some issues with a 200 GB hard disk.