[mythtv-users] ASUS Pundit choice

[Mark Knecht]

Required adds: processor, memory
Optional adds: hard drive & CD/DVD (or diskless) , tuner

Only room for a single hard drive, but it has a number of USB and 1394
ports for external storage.

Room for two PCI cards, but it's tight.

It's a bit touchy getting the cables in and hooked up to the hard
drive and the CD. The Pundit-R supports both SATA & EIDE.

NOTE: The Pundit-R is ATI IGP based. This is workign well for myth but
so far I cannot play America's Army on it and it seems that with
certain OpenGL setups the machine crashes.

Take care,
Mark

On 6/25/05, Garry Cook <garrycook at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/25/05, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My interim solution yesterday was to use a little bit of that blue
> > painters tape - used for mashing off windows and such - and put just a
> > piece over the top of the led. The light is now dimmer and a more
> > pleseant indigo rather than the laser beam blue. Since it's just
> > behind the front plastic it's taped to the chassis. I'll see how long
> > it goes before it dries out and drops down.
> >
> > - Mark
> >
> > On 6/25/05, Jeroen Brosens <jeroen at fotoniq.nl> wrote:
> > >  I remember now that I too found those leds a bit too harsh; therefore I
> > > took a anti-static dark, see-through pc hardware bag and folded a piece of
> > > it 8 times or so and taped it in front of those leds. Now the light is dim
> > > enough to not be totally blinded by it when we're watching tv from the
> > > couch. So don't throw away those hdd bags folks..!
> > >
> > >  -- Jeroen
> > >
> > >  Mark Knecht schreef:
> > >  On 6/24/05, Nick <knowledgejunkie at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >  On 6/24/05, Jeroen Brosens <jeroen at fotoniq.nl> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >  For a good image quality: do not use SiS. The chip doesn't support any
> > > form of vsync control, neither hardware or software; even a
> > > vga-rgb/scart cable doesn't give optimal results. Therefore, tv-out
> > > using the bob deinterlacer (the only filter producing fluid motion) goes
> > > jittering every now and then, which I found to be quite annoying. I have
> > > the Pundit non-R and placed an AGP nVidia GeForce MX4000 card in it; now
> > > it's picture perfect. Search a bit for 'sis' and 'bobdeint' in the
> > > mailing archives and read my posts about it.
> > >
> > > For the rest of the components, the Pundit is an excellent choice. I
> > > have one standing next to a Philips 16:9 tv; both of them silver and
> > > blue leds, nice :)
> > >
> > >  I had to disconnect those LEDs ... too bright for me, esp the HDD one!
> > >
> > >  Boy, I agree with that. We hate the power one actually. We're forever
> > > putting something in front of the unit on the TV to block it. I'm
> > > looking at placing some sort of putty or something behind the cover
> > > but in front of the LED. Since the LED doesn't get hot I figure some
> > > sort of semi-transparent stuff would help.
> > >
> > > I had a new EIDE Seagate drive I got from Newegg die two days ago so I
> > > went to frys and got a SATA drive yesterday to replace it. I'm
> > > rebuilding the system now and the HDD light doesn't light when the
> > > SATA drive is in use. Similar for you?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >  I think either the Pundit-S or the newer Pundit-R will work fine as a
> > > frontend/backend combo. The only piece of hardware in my Pundit-R that
> > > is not supported is the ENE multicard reader.
> > >
> > > Nick
> > >
> > >  I like these little machines. My two remaining desktop machines, one
> > > Linux and the other Windows, use only 1 or 2 PCI cards. If these
> > > mythfrontend machines work out I may scrap the desktops, steal the
> > > hardware and just go with a small rack of these things. They're nice
> > > and reasonably quiet, although I'd like to try out some sort of CPU
> > > frequency scaling to see if I can get to an idle mode where the fan
> > > doesn't run when the machine isn't in real use. Either that of maybe
> > > some sort of suspend mode.
> > >
> > > Take care,
> > > Mark
> 
> These Pundits sound really cool (aside from the blinding LEDs). I
> might just pick one of these up...
> If I understand correctly, you just need to add a hard drive and tuner, right?
> Is there room for more than one hdd?
> What is the difference between the Pundit and Pundit-R?
> 
> --Garry
>