[mythtv-users] System upgrade idea...comments and suggestions wanted, please?

Michael Freeman mlfreeman at gmail.com
Sat Oct 14 18:42:19 UTC 2006


I was looking at my current mythfrontandbackend system and thinking about
upgrading it when I realized that a Mac Mini Core Duo might be faster.

Current:
Athlon64 3000+
1 GB DDR400 RAM
250 GB WD SATA hard drive (for OS and Myth recordings...I never manage to
fill it up...)
400 GB WD SATA hard drive (for a samba share for other things)
pcHDTV3000 (for clear QAM...I added it 6 months after I built the machine)
DVICO FusionHDTV 5 Lite (for over the air or clear QAM...I added it 8 months
after I built the machine)
WinTV PVR500 (the original tuner I put in when I built the box)

The system seems almost able to play back all types of HDTV smoothly...I
can't get XVMC to work for more than 10 seconds at a time, so I don't use
it.
I also have a few services (samba, apache, subversion, etc) on there for
some personal coding / other things.


I want to upgrade to a dual core system with 2 GB RAM for two reasons:
1. Faster individual cores seems like the easiest way to make sure my HDTV
playback is finally flawless...it actually got better from 0.18 to
0.19(haven't gone to
0.20 yet).
2. The second core ought to make it possible to run a VMWare VM or something
similarly demanding at the same time as a Myth HDTV show.

I got to thinking that a 1.83 GHz Core Duo Mac Mini with 2 GB RAM and a 160
GB internal drive might just be all I need.
I have a 500 GB FireWire / USB2 external drive I could use to replace my 400
GB drive now (or I could just delete most or all of that stuff, since I
probably don't need it anyway).
I figure I could get a HDHomeRun for QAM tuning and either an Adaptec
AVC3160 (if it's supported in Linux...I can't find any claims either way) or
a couple of WinTV PVR USB2s...thereby giving me the same thing I have
now...2 analog mpeg-encoding and 2 digital tuners, separate mythtv and
archival drives, and a more powerful base system (I think).

The Mac Mini would have OS X wiped in favor of Gentoo (which is what I'm
using now).


It'd be nice if I could indeed upgrade to a Mac Mini Core Duo...faster
(hopefully), smaller, quieter, and cooler.
I do know the one immediately visible downside would be the increased number
of wires, but I can live with that if the noise, power usage, and heat
production decreases.

Does anyone have any suggestions, comments, etc? I know I may have said a
lot, but this wouldn't be a cheap upgrade...and I tend to think a lot before
considering expensive purchases.


Thanks,
Michael L. Freeman
mlfreeman at gmail.com
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