User:Lisch
Primary front end:
Antec NSK2480
Intel DG965OT
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200
1GB RAM (2 × 512MB dual channel)
Asus SVDO card (DVI-D)
Seagate 200GB SATA II 2.5" drive
Samsung DVD SATA drive
iMon VFD/IR
Opensuse 11.1
The Intel DG965OT mainboard has integrated video and audio. The only video port, however, is VGA. The add-on Asus SVDO card occupies the 16x PCI-Express slot and provides a DVI-D connector. I use a DVD-D to HDMI adapter to connect to our Sony 46" XBR4.
The NSK2480 case comes with two 12cm fans. I removed one and blocked the hole (with the cover that Antec provides). I replaced the other fan with a quiet Nexus. I'm using a Zalman AlCu7000 cooler, with the fan set on low.
I started with a 3.5" disk, but then replaced it with an extra 2.5" disk that I had lying around. I cannot hear the disk at all.
The system is silent from the sofa. You have to get close to it to hear the fans.
I installed Opensuse 10.3 and later upgraded to 11.1 without any problems. It recognized and setup the video, audio, and gigabit Ethernet.
I'm using lirc unmodified from the Opensuse 11.1 distribution, but I had to download and install LCDproc manually. I built it from sources, but I believe an RPM is available from one of the Opensuse repositories.
I wrote my own lircrc that meets our needs.
This has been a remarkably easy system to build.
The Intel integrated video works well except for some tearing.
The Intel HD audio has an optional digital (TOSLINK) connection as well as 5.1 analog outputs. We use the TOSLINK to connect to our receiver. It took me awhile to configure Myth to pass through AC3 and DTS correctly, but I think that was my problem. Now, the digital passthrough usually works.
Back end:
5 x 750GB Seagate SATA II in software Raid 10, hot-swappable
Core 2 Duo E2180
2 GB RAM
OpenSuse 11.1
Gigabit Ethernet
OpenSuse 11.1 has a nice GUI for configuring RAID, but the GUI doesn't know about Raid 10, so I had to use mdadm on the command line.
So far, no other problems. I run a separate Mysqld process on the backend just for Myth because my primary Mysql server is still stuck on Mysql 4. (I have upgraded my primary Mysql server to mysql 5, but still run the MythTV database on the Myth TV backend for simplicity.)
