[mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for music-only frontend?

[Craig Partin]

On 5/4/05, Christopher David Petersen
<christopher.david.petersen at gmail.com> wrote:
> No flames. 
>   
> The referenced web page (which I've read carefully several times) is talking
> about system requirements for video. I'm interested in the minimum
> requirements for a music only frontend. Basically, I'd only run mythmusic
> with no visualizations. 
>   
> Slightly different. And, hopefully, different enough to prevent RTFM flames.
>   
> If this question still seems too flame-able, then let's all agree that the
> next and last post to this thread will be mine: reporting on the results of
> the experiment with the aforementioned hardware. 
>   
> Agreed? 
>   
> -- 
> Christopher David Petersen
> 
>  
>  
> On 5/4/05, Andrew Close <aclose at gmail.com> wrote: 
> > On 5/4/05, Christopher David Petersen
> > <christopher.david.petersen at gmail.com > wrote:
> > > I'm thinking about using an old laptop for a music-only frontend and I
> have
> > > a few questions:
> > >
> > > 1) Is a PII 366 and 128 MB really enough to run Linux and a MythTV
> frontend?
> > > How about a Pentium 200 MMX with 96MB?
> > > 2) What's an easy to install distro that has a small enough memory
> footprint
> > > for 128 MB? For 96MB?
> > > 3) Can 802.11b handle streaming FLAC audio files via SMB from the
> backend? 
> > >
> > >
> > > Having read the documentation and searched the list, I feel this machine
> > > could do it, but before purchasing it, I'd like to get some empirical
> data.
> > 
> > Hi Christopher,
> > 
> > no offense, but be prepared to be flamed. :) 
> > http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1
> > there is a rough list of minimum requirements about a 1/8 way down  the
> page.
> > 
> > your PII 366 may be able to handle recording and playback 
> > simultaneously if you are using one of the pvr cards.  you could
> > probably use this machine as a backend if all your cards were
> > prv-X50's.  i'd guess you'd need to bump up the RAM though.
> > you 'may' be able to use the P200MMX for a backend as well since the 
> > pvr cards do all the encoding/decoding (?) for you.  but i doubt it
> > would work as a front end.
> > 
> > PIII with 256MB RAM is the 'recommended' minimum.  YMMV.
> > good luck :)
> > 
> 
>  
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> 
> 
> 

Personally I think the last guy deserves flaming for not reading your
post thoroughly before responding.  :)

It takes almost no CPU to play music, even FLAC decoding can be done
on more modest processors than your old Pentium.  Linux will run on
anything, I think even KB of memory.  The only problems I see would be
the slowness of menus in loading a large music library.  I'm certain
your machine would make a fine music only frontend.  I ran a video
FE/BE on a 500MHz Celeron for a few months.