vasudeva       10-18-2005, 12:44 pm

Check out MythTV. The LBP built a myth box 1.5 years ago that is fairly solid and does most of what you're talking about. It has features I never use (like telephone center and games) but one thing I'm pretty sure you won't find is any sort of WINE add-on. Of course, it's just a Linux box running a fancy media center, so you can always exit the media center and launch WINE yourself.

It has probably half a terabyte of storage and now acts as my media fileserver. We use it mainly to capture and replay TV and I use my modded XBox for the rest (usually pulling media files off the myth box using, yes, Samba).

A dude named Axel Thimm has released RPMs of the various install files, so if you can install Fedora, you can probably install Myth.

vasudeva       10-18-2005, 12:46 pm

P.S. I don't use VNC for it, but I often come in over SSH to launch programs on the TV display, or sometimes I'll forward an X connection if I want to dink around with the Myth config dialogues on a high-resolution monitor. You could of course use WinVNC to control it, but keep in mind that if you get a TV tuner card, you essentially have a DIY Tivo and a decent tuner card comes with a remote, and you can map the remote keys to do anything you want using lirc.

mundhra       10-18-2005, 01:35 pm

my setup is currently: 1ghz athlon/512mb ram/1 gb hd/ati radeon w/tv out

i'm running geexbox on it. it plays downloaded movies burnt onto cds fine. it also plays audio. it's supposed to do wired networking and detect windows shares, but i could never get that to work. then again, i never tried too hard.

i'm looking to buy a pvr-150 card and storage drive in order to run mythtv. i'll upgrade the video card if i have to.

you may want to check out knoppmyth, which is apparently down right now. here's the wiki.

as far as your list:

1. Booting the OS without user interaction, and feeding a signal to the TV-out portion of the video card. (nVidia has good linux drivers, yes?)

this shouldn't be a problem, and if it is you can probably find out how to fix it pretty easily. nvidia is better for linux, although i haven't had too much of a problem with my ati running gentoo.

2. Mounting windows shared folders onto the linux system, possibly both FAT32 and NTFS, reading is required, but writing is not. (SAMBA, right?)

yis, with samba the filesystem won't matter.

3. Playing back audio from my built into the motherboard audio. i also have some older non-integrated audio cards(one's an aureal, anothers a cheapo maddog sound board), but i think they're all dead. i need stereo only, it's no 6.1 setup or anything.

you shouldn't have a problem with this other than that audio on linux requires some setup. it helps to know what the audio chipset is.

4. Utilizing the robanton? robocom? USB to wireless ethernet adapter. i'm thinking this may be my biggest problem. I do have a wired ethernet card in the system for intallation purposes, but it cannot be a permanant solution.

this is my biggest fear. i haven't messed with wireless and linux yet. i know orinoco gold cards are good. prism chipset, i think.

5. Having a nice easy to use audio player that will play all my formats (mostly mp3's, some FLAC, etc - nothing with DRM) and has a decent playlist incorporated and can deal with large lists. I don't need it to sort my music or anything. remember, i'm happy with winamp's playlist right now. it would be ideal if i could just drag & drop folders of music into the player. this part is the most important as it will probably be the most used.

you can use xmms which is very similar to winamp. dunno about dragging and dropping, but the playlist format works from one to the other.

6. Having a nice easy to use video player that will play all my formats (divx, xvid, 3ivx, latest whizz-bang video codec those hackers are using nowdays, etc). playlist is really nice to have here as well. this could be the same as #5, but i rather like having my audio & video playlists seperate. DVDs will not be played on this box, it has only a cd-rom drive and i have a standalone for DVDs anyway.

mplayer should work fine. maybe vlc.

7. a way to run the Yourself!Fitness "game". (via WINE?)

probably not, but i haven't needed wine. dual boot?

8. needs to work with a resolution of 720x480 (with cutoff/overscan) or 640x480 (no cutoff) and be useable/readable. right now i use large windows fonts and it looks ok.

dunno.

9. Some sort of remote desktop/VNC that works from my xp desktop. (i'm thinking this exists and compatable with my VNC viewer)

vnc should not be a problem if you want to install it.

optional:

9. browse the web on tv. this is really a nobrainer - just need a browser where you can resize the fonts. usually needed anyway for new software/drivers.

installing/using firefox should not be a problem.

10. streaming video from web to tv. my gf used this once for a class that provided videos of the lecture on the web via RealVideo. i installed RealAlternative and it worked great. not a big deal.

dunno about real and linux. i avoid real at all costs. streaming should be fine as long as you don't have problems related to wireless bandwidth.

even though i typed all this, i don't really have anything to add to what vas said... good luck and have fun.

autoshoes       10-18-2005, 03:12 pm

somewhere at home i have a knoppMyth CD i burned a while back, and i'll be testing it. i like the idea of using mythTV, maybe i can add an icon/option for my "game" under wine or something. it'll also allow me to do the cool tv thing when i want to invest in it, and/or have a extra hard drive of some capacity laying around.

thanks for mentioning geexbox, i had forgotten about that. i'll be checking it out as well.

right now i've downloaded fedora and ubuntu; somewhere at home i have a knoppix and knoppMyth cd to try; and i downloaded wine, mythtv and geexbox.

looking around on the internet, i found some information showing that my wireless is probalby an ATMEL chipset. i'm hoping that it's right cause it sounds like that's supported.

thanks for the help guys, i'll probably be trying it this weekend.

mundhra       10-19-2005, 09:18 am

sounds like you have enough options to get where you want to go. ;)

for summary's sake: keep in mind, you can probably use any linux distro for (most of) what you currently want, with the inclusion of wine. all you need to do is set up your xorg.conf file to use tvout and configure your wireless card.

i also wanted to reiterate that geexbox will severely limit you. it's extremely specialized and uses uclibc instead of glibc (which almost every other distro uses) so apps are not portable.

let us know how it goes.

autoshoes       10-20-2005, 09:05 am

well i tried installing fedora, and it seems my fears have been confirmed:

my hardware seems to be flaky.

i was hoping that the instability issues i was having with windows were all software related, but after attempting to install fedora about half a dozen or more times, it seems there are some issues with either my ram, my hard drive(s), or both. the fedora install fails right at the point where it either a) is about to format the drive for fedora, b) where it is messing with the MBR, or c) when it starts to copy the files. i can get through all the options where i choose what i want installed and all, but then when it says it's about to install, the machine freaks out and reboots on me. you can hear the HD winding down for a moment then back up again. my brother has promised me a 70+GB drive that he's pulled out of his old system. once i get this, i'll be replacing my ancient 6 & 8gb drives i'm using now. but he lives in austin, so it'll be whenever we get together again.

i also have some issues where the thing reboots and goes from 512mb to 384mb of ram, then back again to 512. if i wiggle one of the ram chips while the machine is on (yeah i know i'm flirting with disaster) it reboots like it sometimes randomly does. i'm thinking there's some bad connection somewhere that eventually works itself out from the vibration of the fans in the machine or something. i've done the memtest86 that is included with fedora, and it has sucessfully done 2 passes on all 512mb. so i'm assuming the ram is good, just the connection/seating is giving me issues.

so i'll probably wait and see what happens with the new HD when i get it, but since it seems i have some issues with the ram sockets, i'm wondering if i should either scrap this whole machine or just replace the motherboard and see how that goes. i've already looked on ebay, and even though it seems to be hard to find mb's that take pc100/133 ram, it seems one could be got for around $15-30 including shipping.
personally, i'm against spending as much dough as possible on this system, since it is my "spare" machine. but i have grown fond of playing my divx's on my tv vs my desktop, and getting a mythtv box setup to record shows is appealing....

mundhra       10-20-2005, 09:34 am

sucks to hear it didn't go well. if it looks like a hardware issue, the only thing you can do is eliminate problems by removing extraneous cards/ram/hds. if the problem persists, then swap out components one at a time.

have you flashed the bios? it may help as far as stability is concerned. google for problems with your motherboard. ie: 'asus XXXXX fedora reboot' or 'asus XXXXX fedora install problem'. i had an abit kt7a that would not run windows 2000 for more than a day or two without rebooting. after searching for a while i found that i just needed to change a registry entry and it would stay up and solid for months at a time.

Hobo       10-20-2005, 11:55 am

I still can't program the clock on my VCR

magicchex       10-20-2005, 03:07 pm

New cheap hardware:

barebone system -- $162
CPU/heatsink -- $67
512mb memory -- $39
80gb harddrive -- $56
if you want a new video card: HDTV/S-Video/Composite Outs -- $74

onboard audio, recycle old parts that you can.

just my take :)

magicchex       10-20-2005, 03:09 pm

oh and dvd drive -- $20

magicchex       10-20-2005, 03:37 pm

The Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 card supposedly works great with KnoppMyth and is cheap.

autoshoes       10-20-2005, 03:57 pm

chex: haha. i say that "i'm against spending as much dough as possible on this system, since it is my "spare" machine", and your response is for me to spend ~$400

hell, those specs you laid out are better than my desktop. if i was to spend that kinda money, i'd be upgrading my desktop and then migrate all the old parts to this spare box (which is what i've been doing for a few years now).

haha. over here i'm wondering if i should get a new mb; maybe new ram....yeah a whole new system would be nice, but watching divx's on my tv is just not worth THAT much to me.

mund: yeah that's the next step, pulling components. although there's not much to pull...a network card, a usb card, the video card (actually already tried this one) and the ram. i could always try swapping the cpu. i think i have a 700 or 450 duron laying around.
the bios is up to date. the last update was over a year ago and it was updated then. they've since quit supporting the board to focus on newer ones.
anyway, i'll be pulling lots of overtime in the next few weeks, so maybe i'll be able to afford an upgrade on my desktop and move some nicer parts to this box. until then, troubleshooting time!

autoshoes       10-21-2005, 10:50 am

ah-hah!
i am now proudly typing to you from my newly installed fedora system!

it seems that the CPU itself was the culprit. i found my old 750 duron (as it turned out to be) and swapped it in, and all of the problems seem to have melted away. upon removing the cpu, it seems that the thermal grease had somehow dried up and only a few flakes remained on the cpu core. not quite sure if the cpu is salvagable, but i think the 750 will do for now.

anyway, i'll be intslling mythtv shortly; i'm following instructions from this page. wish me luck.

autoshoes       10-27-2005, 11:25 am

ok, so i suck. the install after fedora has not gone smoothly, and for now, i'm giving up on mythtv, and likewise, linux.

the main problem being that i haven't been able to connect to my network shared windows drives. i tried lisa or whatever it's called, but even though it says it's running it says it isn't running. gah. the other problem being that it looks like if i want to use my wireless lan usb thingie i'll have to compile shit. i don't have the patience for that either.

reinstall? maybe in another month or so when i have more time. for now, i'm booting back into the winxp drive that i was smart enough to not wipe immediately. at least with the old 750 cpu in there, it's up and running, and stable for 4+days now.

vasudeva       10-27-2005, 01:16 pm

Lisa is just an interface to Samba. Samba is what manages all the talking to Windows shares and back. Highly recommended. There are a ton of config options but you can get up and running and doing all you need to do with a small handful of conventional options you can find in 5 minutes of websearching or 2 minutes of asking me.