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digiology2 · Nov 16, 2004, 09:46 PM

Hi, I have on old PII 233Mhz pc and I was thinking of installing linux on it and setting up a HTTP sever. Im guessing provided I won't have too much traffic it should be able to handle this.
The next thing I'd like to do is buy a video card with tv out and store my ripped DVDs on it (it would be in my tv room) so I can watch them on TV. Im just wondering would this PC be capable of playing Divx (for example) files at a decent frame rate with VLC(or a similar program) for linux?

Thanks

The Godfather · Nov 16, 2004, 11:51 PM

It is a hard call. My former computer was a P2-333 and it could play DivX fine.

mitchell_pgh · Nov 17, 2004, 12:22 AM

Hmmmm... the apache server will run on anything and is very efficient... so the real question is the DivX player... I think it should be OK. It all depends upon the quality of the movies and how the whole thing is set up.

brapper · Nov 17, 2004, 12:25 AM

233 ran divx files as of two years ago when I had a dell.

digiology2 · Nov 17, 2004, 09:35 PM

I'd say my biggest problem will be trying to find a video card (with tv out)that supports linux....
I just realised I need quicktime for alot of my movie files, so I cant play them on linux!
Looks like I'll have to stick with windows 98.
If Im storing all my files on my mac and have these two computers networked will the pc wake up the mac if its asleep if I am requesting a file?
Would having this PC on all day and night run up my electricity bill?

Thanks for all the help

RiSE · Nov 18, 2004, 02:08 AM

you will have no problem running linux. As for the video card, does your mobo have a AGP slot? I cant remember what motherboards were like back in 233 days

Although i did have a TV capture card on my 100mhz packard hell. It was a PCI card and dropped about 93042029 frames a min

digiology2 · Nov 18, 2004, 08:08 AM

im not too sure, I somehow doubt it has an agp slot. I really don't want to open this thing it takes ages, I suppose I'll have to at some stage.
I just looked around the back and it has an input (or maybe output) called "video" its kind of simular to a small heaphone input. Im going to try and hok this up to my tv soon, maybe I won't have to buy a new video card.

Scifience · Nov 18, 2004, 11:42 AM

The Apache server will be no problem; it will run on anything.

TV-Out in Linux is suprisingly well supported. There are a number of OSS projects out there that specialize in that type of thing; Freevo and MythTV are two that come to mind. I have a Linux-based PVR and TV-Out works just fine (well, at least it does after you tinker with it and curse at it for eight hours, but that is sort of like everything in Linux).

I can't say how well DiVX will run on that system. I haven't used a 233Mhz system since 1998. My current setup is an Athlon64 3200+, 1GB RAM, and 2x250GB SATA in RAID 0. The graphics card is an Nvidia 6800GT.

My friend tried to set up a TiVO-type system on a PII 333 and told me that it was horribly slow. That was using Freevo, but he was trying to play and record at the same time.

As far as a distro, I would recommend Gentoo. It compiles everything from scratch, so it takes a while to get set up, but once everything is configured and ready you have a much more optimized system. This is especially important when doing it on an older, slow computer.

They didn't have AGP back then, at least not IIRC. My 233Mhz system had ISA slots, not even PCI! You may have trouble getting what you want running for that reason if no other.

You could probably build a decent system (1.7Ghz) for around $300 that would do what you want, plus record TV. Might be something to look into, depending on how much money you are willing to sink into the project (in my case, $5000, but you can certainly do it for a lot less than that). Newegg.com is a good place to start if you're looking for parts.

digiology2 · Nov 19, 2004, 04:43 PM

Im not really familiar with PVRs, I know they have a hard drive to record and play back video but im not sure about the concept behind it. If I bought some kind of system that had more features then I'd go ahead and buy it, thats if it would be useful.
I think the most annoying thing will be having to use a keyboard and mouse though. If I can get my system fetching files from my mac in another room and playing in my TV room I'll be happy!

Scifience · Nov 19, 2004, 04:48 PM

Originally posted by digiology2:
Im not really familiar with PVRs, I know they have a hard drive to record and play back video but im not sure about the concept behind it. If I bought some kind of system that had more features then I'd go ahead and buy it, thats if it would be useful.
I think the most annoying thing will be having to use a keyboard and mouse though. If I can get my system fetching files from my mac in another room and playing in my TV room I'll be happy!

I use a remote for mine. I picked it up for about $45.

digiology2 · Nov 19, 2004, 08:44 PM

Im not really familiar with PVRs, I know they have a hard drive to record and play back video but im not sure about the concept behind it. If I bought some kind of system that had more features then I'd go ahead and buy it, thats if it would be useful.
I think the most annoying thing will be having to use a keyboard and mouse though. If I can get my system fetching files from my mac in another room and playing in my TV room I'll be happy!