[mythtv-users] Backend/Frontend hardware (new system)

Damian myth at surr.co.uk
Tue Sep 18 19:21:39 UTC 2012


On 18/09/2012 18:43, Mike Perkins wrote:
> On 18/09/12 17:07, Damian wrote:
>> On 18/09/2012 15:48, jedi wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 12:13:16PM +1000, Michael Watson wrote:
>>>> On 18/09/2012 10:58 AM, Nick Rout wrote:
>>>>> On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 12:45 PM, Michael Watson
>>>>> <michael at thewatsonfamily.id.au> wrote:
>>>>>> On 18/09/2012 9:39 AM, Nick Rout wrote:
>>>>>>> On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 9:36 AM, Michael Watson
>>>>>>> <michael at thewatsonfamily.id.au> wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 18/09/2012 7:27 AM, Tyler T wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Do you still intend to record TV for later viewing? I don't see
>>>>>>>>> a
>>> [deletia]
>>>
>>>>> Or are you better to go with the lower power machine if you want to
>>>>> look after the environment? We burn coal for electricity after all. I
>>>>> simply don't know the right answer here! I doubt that any one
>>>>> answer is
>>>>> "right".
>>>> Coal is not the only material used to generate power.  There are many
>>>> others including Nuclear, Wind, Solar, and Water
>>>>
>>>> But, back to the original statement.  You do not need a new high priced
>>>> machine to run Myth Frontend or Backend seperate or combined. You
>>>> can do
>>>> it quite happily on equipment that is 5+ Years old, for very little out
>>>> lay.
>>> One of my frontends is an 5 year old tower PC that was trailing edge
>>> hardware 5 years ago. Bought it because it was cheap. It does fine
>>> though
>>> because I put a good video card in it (nv430).
>>>
>>> I also recently dramatically improved the performance of a similar
>>> machine
>>> by putting a nv8400 in it. A good video card can go a long way and a
>>> good
>>> video card can be a relic itself.
>>>
>>> [deletia] _______________________________________________ mythtv-users
>>> mailing list mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>>> http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>>
>> I have an old Dell Precision 670 machine (was a high end CG animation
>> workstation a few years ago) which I was initially planning to use as an
>> 'always on' network server and MythTV FE/BE.
>>
>> There were 2 problems with this plan: 1) I found out that the machine
>> can not
>> take drives bigger than 300 Gig (probably a limit added because of
>> it's high
>> end nature .. they are very careful with the spec of these machines)
>> 2) It's
>> a complete power hog due to it having 2 separate processors in there.
>>
>> It's a noisy beast too.
>>
>> Maybe I can make do with it for the FE/BE system though?
>>
>> If I get something like a Netgear ReadyNAS (which I have just seen
>> could have
>> my Logitec music backend on it) to house a 2 TB hd, then I could just
>> turn
>> this old beast of a machine on when we actually want to watch
>> something on
>> the projector.
>>
>> Does that sound reasonable?
>>
>> It wouldn't feel right to keep this machine on 27/4, so is it possible
>> for
>> the machine to turn it's self on and off for scheduled recordings etc?
>> How
>> easy would something like that be to set up? Would it need specific
>> hardware?
>>
>> And would it be possible to turn the machine on using something like
>> an app
>> on my iphone (to prevent walking through 3 rooms to press the power
>> button)?
>>
>> That last one certainly wouldn't be a deal breaker. It would just make me
>> feel a bit more like James Bond :-)
>>
> You might have problems with that idea. The problem that I found with a
> similar beast was that the BIOS is pretty restricted... it wouldn't even
> let me boot without a monitor connected, the disk had to be cable select
> and when netbooting used a customized version of Etherboot that didn't
> talk to anything else I had... and still required keyboard intervention
> to activate.
>
> Good machine, but it's basically a doorstop.


Will the problems you are expecting be with getting the machine to turn 
it's self on and off and getting WOL stuff to work?

I have tested Ubuntu on the system and got it showing up on my 
projector. Not got a tuner card (or usb .. not sure to go for internal 
or external) yet, so not tried myth.

Is there any way to test if MythTV will be able to turn the machine on 
and off when it needs to?

Thanks
Damian


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