Hey everyone! I am going to try and setup a Myth box and a friend gave me her Dell Optiplex GX110 for free (yeah!). I wanted to know if you guys think it would be a good computer to use for Myth or I shouldn't bother.

Specs: P3 800 or so.
Intel chip set 810e
512 or 1024 RAM

Any advice?

Thanks very much!
Daniel

If you need TV out, I highly suggest trying to find a PCI nvidia video card rather than using the integrated i810 card. A problem is PCI video cards are harder to come by and new ones are now overpriced, maybe finding a used one on ebay would be wise.

For StandardDef TV will be ok, but not going to cut it for HighDef.

I had a GX110 running for my finance before we got hitched for about 6 months and it worked out well.


I have it documented here

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=13341

You may have to hack the install a little, I had to blacklist my i810 driver with using the Nvidia card. Not too hard though.

Hi,

I have one running with R5C7 and a pvr-350 card. Works well for standard ntsc tv, music, gallery etc. Not enough "umph" for dt. I use 384 mem and 384 swap.

Mike

Awesome guys! Thank you so very much! I will start the setup this week and let you know how it goes or if I have any questions. Really appreciate the links and advice.

Best,
Daniel

Hi,
I used the tv out from the 350 card so the onboard i810 was fine. I don't recall anything "super special" to setup, maybe audio. You may have an issue getting the audio started but was a simple tweak. You didn't mention which tuner card you were going to use, hard drive size or what version of KM.

The R5C7 had one tweak required to fix a logging issue (errored after a few months) also you won't be able to add any other utilities as the repository files change with time and won't install properly. (breaks system)

The R5F1 should work ok also but there are a couple of tweaks needed (for 350 tv out) so be sure to check tjc's excellent document for guidence. Some extra add on apps can be installed safely.

Mike

This is the card a friend of mine recommended. What do you think? If there is a better option, would you be so kind as to send me a link or two?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... auge%2b500

Thank you!
Daniel

That is a PVR-500 MCE. I agree staying with the Hauppauge PVR X50/500 line of cards is wise.

Here are 2 comparison of the cards

http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=TVCards

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Vi ... MPEG_cards

I don't use a PVR-500 (I use a PVR-150), so I don't know how well they work with R5F1. But a quick search of the forum didn't turn up anything too bad.

I'm happy with my PVR-150 as an analog card.

2 downsides I see to above card, no remote, and no video output (PVR-350 has video out)

Do you work for a large financial company like myself? My company gave me a dozen GX110's for free. I have been installing them as PVR's and selling them to friends.

I put a 350 in each and a 320 gig drive. They come with 512 meg memory. Work great.

Let me know if you have any issues or questions.

Abby

Hey guys! It turns out that a friend is sending me their Dell, which is a much better computer.

4500s P4 2.0 ghz. 2 GB RAM
2 PCI slots. On board AGP

Here is a link to the specs:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/s ... tm#1101572

Do you think the configuration will be any different?

Thank you!
Daniel

Hi,
Build two
Mike

Neither a 2ghz or 800mhz is going to handle HD that well. You may be able to get some light HD running on a 2ghz, but going to take some hacking like upgrading nvidia drivers, enable XvMC, using some extra nvida options in your config. I have HD working on a 2.6ghz, but is touchy. Again for SD both are fine.

On SD the 2ghz and 2GB RAM will end up helping your for comm flagging, running user jobs (myth2ipod), transcoding, and overall snappiness.

Both machine have that limitation of no AGP slot and having to resort to PCI video card (nvidia) or PVR-350 for TVoutput too.

Hey everyone,

Sorry for this taking so long, but I received MORE donations, so now the final decision is down to one of the following three. Which one do you think would be the best?

I already bought and received the Hauppage 500 card with the MCE remote. Going to pick up a second PCI geforce 4 card with s-video out or something similar.


1) Dell Dimension 3000 (Tower, three PCI expansion slots, built in sound and ethernet, etc.)
Pentium 4 2.8 ghz

2) Dell Dimension 4500 S (Form factor, two PCI expansion slots, built in sound NO ethernet (would have to add a USB ethernet adaptor for $12.99)
Pentium 4 1.8 ghz


3) eMachine T1440 (Tower, Four expansion slots, built in sound and ethernet, etc.)
Celeron 1.40 ghz

Thank you!
Daniel

All should work, I've installed a quite a few Dell systems and am typically happy with hardware detection.

I'd go for
1) Dell Dimension 3000 (Tower, three PCI expansion slots, built in sound and ethernet, etc.)
Pentium 4 2.8 ghz

Gives you a HD path down the road.

If you are only going to do standard def, than any of them has sufficient processing power, but I suspect that the dell machines will be much quieter. If you are doing hidef, the P4-2.8ghz machine is the only one on the list that has enough processing power to deal with playback of hidef.

Marc

Thanks for the responses. No hi-def. Standard and maybe digital cable down the road, but for now just standard.

I like the form factor smaller dell because it will slide right into the entertainment center, so aesthetically, it's the best choice, but I wasn't sure if running the ethernet off of a usb ethernet adapter was going to be an issue for device discovery, etc..

Thanks again, you guys are awesome!
Daniel