[vdr] Re: Hardware recommendation?

[Christian Bodenstedt <c.bodenstedt@cityweb.de>]

Stephan Martin <dvb@martin.de> wrote:

> Most important for me is, that its stable and reliable and thingst that 
> should work (APM or ACPI, DMA, USB, IR, Sound without klicks when
> accessing the HD) just work.

I own an Asus a7v266e (that's a KT266a board, too) with Athlon XP 1500. I
never tried using ACPI, USB or IR, APM I'm using only for shutdown. DMA
works quite good as long as I don't use my slowest old 13.5GB-HD or try
working on the 3 other HD's at the same time. With working on the disks I
mean copying big files like vdr-recordings, the normal access to the disks
like starting programs or copying smaller files doesn't cause any problem.
BUT: all HD's are jumpered master as the board has 4 IDE channels. When I
let it only play back a movie with mplayer I never noticed problems.


> (I usually by a cheap processor. When the fastest processor running in a
> Board is cheap, I upgrade, using the Mainboard another few years)

Maybe it would be the better choice to choose a mainbord that is as "old"
as the cheap processor. Then you can be sure that the bord works more
reliable as the manufacturer had enough time to write a bios or fix some
other problems. Also I don't think you would have spent more money if you
had bought the duron with a kt133(a)-bord and would buy an Athlon XP with
kt333-board in future. 

I bought my kt266a-board about 15 month ago with the cheapest CPU which
made sense - the slowest AthlonXP at this time. Your duron probably cannot
use the memory-bandwidth of that board while your board won't be able to
make the mem-bandwidth available that a FSB333-CPU like newer Athlons
could use.


> At the moment I have a Epox 8kha+ Mainboard (VIA KT266A chipset).

I bought an Asus-board because it had the 4 IDE-channels and because I
wasn't that happy with my K6-2 on an Epox-board, even if boards from other
manufacturers where about 50 Eur cheaper.


> I got it to work with APM, but I still don't get nvram-wakeup to work.

I can use it when I swich it on directly in the bios-menue, I didn't try
doing this with any programs under linux.


> Since the beginning til now I get lockups when watching tv with vdr and
> tuxview using video overlay. It also happens when using xawtv or fbtv.
>
> Usually it takes some time and happens when accessing the harddrive.
> Then the harddrive led is on and nothing, except of the fans, is doing
> something. Afterwards I have datacorruption like /bin/uname being a
> device or /bin/login a directory (I use ext3 and 2.4.20 kernel). It
> happed with the old and new drivers. It ist only when doing video
> overlay

Your pc freezes completely? Maybe a problem with your power supply?


> Without video overlay watching tv needs about 50 % of my Duron 800
> and the video stops for about 1/10 s when reading or writing to
> harddrive.(yes, I use DMA for the 3 harddiscsv and have onlz problems
> with videooverlay)

Are two of these HDDs on the same IDE-channel (one as master, the other
slave)? 

I noticed similar behaviour when watching a recording with time-shift some
very few times. I don't know on which HD it was recorded, as I have my
/video/ partition on LVM which uses the three bigger HDs (Maxtor: 2x40,
1x120GB). I solved the problem by turning off Swap, which is on both 40GB
discs (and shouldn't be needed with 3/4GB ram). I did all my video
playback with mplayer as I own only a poor budged-card - but I got a DXR3
this week :-))


If I were you, first I'd (again) try the newest bios available. Then I'd
maybe upgrade the CPU to a cheap Athlon XP, as I don't think the kt266a
was built for fsb200-durons. Also a faster CPU won't hurt if your
power-supply can keep up with the higher currents that'll flow to the CPU.


Good luck,

Christian

P.S.: If you want to, you may send me a german mail describing your whole
      actual System (Hardware and Software). That would be easier for me.


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