[mythtv-users] OT: Hardware failure

[Brian Wood]

Paul.Buchanan at thomson.com wrote:
>> What about it being the "backend" -- I'm looking at the newer MBOs and 
>> seeing only 2 PCI slots and that isn't anywhere near enough if one
> wants
>> to handle 10+ channels (NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, FNN, SciFi, AMC, HIS, DIS, 
>> Animal Planet).  I know one can't handle them all at the same time but 
>> say one wanted to handle 3-5 shows in the same time slot if one had the
> 
>> input cards doing the heavy lifting.  At how many channels do you max
> out 
>> the PCI bus?  And are there any cards using higher bandwidths ( e.g.
> PCIe 
>> x16 or x32)?.

I can record from 4 PVRs at the same time without problems, but that's
with a modern mobo, CPU and disk system.

> 
> The Hauppauge cards with onboard MPEG-2 encoders (PVR-150, PVR-250,
> PVR-500) require the newer PCI signaling voltages and bus-mastered
> slots.
> I tried running my PVR-250 on a celeron 300 board with no luck due to
> older PCI slots.  This is likely to affect your Pentium 75 board, and 
> would result in the board being a non-starter for a backend.

Good point.

There are "external" capture solutions, like the HDHR, USB devices like
the Plextor and Hauppauge units (but you'd need a USB card), so a lack
of PCI slots is not fatal.

There might also be BIOS limitations on disk size. You can get around
this but it's just one more reason the phrase "end of life" does have
some meaning.

A MoBo that old probably doesn't have UDMA capability either, limiting
your disk I/O somewhat.

Running Myth is just not a task for an antique processor, I consider
contacting the Smithsonian to see if they might want to conserve it.

BTW - That CPU might even have the infamous FDIV bug, if so I think you
are past the time limit for getting a free replacement.

BEWW