[mythtv-users] New to Myth, Hardware question.

[Peter Kahle]

I'm about ready to order some hardware for my first myth box and I want
to run the setup past the list to see if it seems sensible. First let me
list my requirements:
1) Must be pretty quiet, and quite cool. It'll be in an enclosed
(glass-front) cabinet under the TV, so circulation isn't great.
2) Can't connect wiredly to the network, so I'm stuck using wireless.
Access point will either be up one level, or if that doesn't work, 10
feet away in the same room. I don't have any wireless equipment in the
house, so the access point and the myth box are going to be the only
things on the link. Rest of the house is wired 100Mb.
3) Not doing HD yet, and in no rush to. I'll buy a new box for that.
4) I'm a Debian user for about 8 years, so I'd like to use that, and I'm
comfortable recompiling the kernel and trial and erroring it till it
works. And I can debug and maybe even do a little coding on drivers or
myth code.
Now, on to the hardware I want to use:

1) Epia MII (Could I get away with the 6000?)
2) 512MB ram
3) Hauppauge 250 or 350 (Want to use Hardware encoding, and willing to
sacrifice disk space to store MPEG2 so I can play it back in hardware as
well.) Can you drive the MII's on-board hardware decoder easily enough
that I could go for the 250, or would I be better off with the 350? How
big are MPEG2 streams and will an 802.11g connection handle one going
each way cleanly? Are there any cards that have both in and out hardware
mpeg4 or other format en/decoding that I should know about/consider?
4) 512MB or 1G flash drive as the boot/root drive. Mount everything else
as NFS
5) PCMCIA 802.11g card for networking. (does this use up too much CPU,
would I be better off using wired connection to external wireless access
point?
6) Case to be decided. I'm open to suggestions here.

That's the first choice. Second choice is to retask a 800MHz Athlon
system with 512Mb Ram as my backend and use the EPIA system as a front
end. I'd prefer not to do that as the Athlon had a tendency to run hot
when last I used it, and it was loud, even for the office.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Peter
-- 
Peter Kahle <pkahle at pobox.com>