Using what I have, to accomplish what I want... Long post!

[berniejr]

Being in the I.T. profession definitely has its advantages, especially in the area of obtaining unwanted computer equipment. Over the years I have obtained an obscene amount of PC's, printers, etc., which generally I recycle and donate to family, friend, and various charities. After finding Xlobby, I have found another avenue in which I can put some of this equipment to use, in automating the A/V functions of my home. In my home I have 3-4 different TV viewing areas which include, a Basement Theater/Rec. Room, a Family Room which is the general viewing area for the family, Master Bedroom, and my daughters have a TV/Play room for there viewing pleasure, however that will change in a few months with the arrival of a new baby, so the girls will then view TV and listen to music in their own rooms. I've gone back in forth on how I wanted to setup my Xlobby Home, and I have come to this as my final plan:

1 Fileserver simply to store media content
1 Testing/ripping/encoding PC
3 HTPC's (Basement, Family Room, and Master BR)

In addition to these PC's each one of my daughters have there own individual PC's, the wife has a laptop, and I have a laptop, which is used for work purposes primarily.

So then on to the equipment: As a disclaimer let me say that I knows that the specs on this equipment are far from "top of the line", however I am from the school of thought that most PC's that are considered old, still have many functions that can be served with little to no effort. In fact in terms of the newer PC's, most people never truly even utilize 25% of the processing power that their PC's have. With that said I have also tested all of this equipment to make sure that the functions that I need, work with no problems

2 - P3 1 Gig PC's (both have 3 memory slots)
1 - P3 733Mhz PC (only has 2 memory slots)
1 - P3 550Mhz PC (has 3 memory slots)
1 - P2 333 Laptop (With 196MB Ram and DVD hardware Decoder)

For storage I currently have 1 250GB Seagate Drive and various other 20, 30 and 40GB Hard drives. I will be adding 3 more 300GB Hard Drives for media storage once everything is configured.

In terms of memory, I have 2 -256Dimms and 9 128-Dimms, all of which are PC133.

The plan as stands right now is to the use the PC's in the following way

Server = P3 - 1Gig PC running XP Pro and Sage TV Server
Testing PC = P3 - 1Gig PC
Basement HTPC = P3 - 733 PC running XP Pro, Xlobby and Sage client
Family Room HTPC = P3 - 550 PC running XP Pro, Xlobby and Sage client
MBR HTPC = P2 - Laptop running XP Pro, Xlobby and Sage Client
In addition the girls PC's will also be able to access content from the server, although I'm not sure if it will be via Xlobby at this time.

So now onto the questions:

1.) How would you allocate the memory listed above into the PC's that I have listed above?

2.) Would you uses the PC's that I have listed differently and if so why?

Again please keep in mind that I am trying my best to build this system using parts that I currently have to buying new equipment is the absolute last option.

I know that this is a long post, so I thank you in advance for taking the time to read it. I find great value and inspiration in getting opinions form users in this forum who have successfully implemented their systems. I am looking forward to hearing your input.

Thanks.

[art]

I'm just going to comment on your server ... with an older hardware like this I would not use XP pro - I would go with Linux (I'm not 100% sure, but I think there is Sage for Linux, I don't use Sage so I may be wrong...) - with Linux you could even use your PIII 550 for the server. I run Duron 700 with 256 mem PC100 on fedora 4 with Samba for all other Windows PC (3 of them) + laptop (windows also) + 2 other Lin laptops (of 'course I don't use them all at the same time ), but ... this server also runs as my web, imap, print and ldap server + it runs bunch of other jobs ... I never had any problems serving mp3s or video files to my other PCs.
Just something to think about.

[berniejr]

Art, thanks for your comments. I actually have put together a couple of Linux based NAS solutions together using Naslite and FreeNas, I haven't yet tested the Darma NAS solution. I was able to get these going on a old P2 - 266 machine, strictly for file sharing, and it's a really nice solution. However I feel that if(more like when) I need more flexibility, then a Windows based OS will be a better solution. Now keep in mind that I will strip down XP to get rid of as much of the uneeded fluff, to keep it running without many problems. Also as you said, I could look to uses a Linux version of Sage, but in order to do that I would need to purchase that version, and instead of using just the NAS Linux solution, I would need to use a full distro of Linux, and I am not that comfortable with Linux to the point that I would want to manage a Linux based server, with all of my media on it at this point. One other work around that I've considered, is to use the Linux NAS solution for file serving only and then placing the my PVR-150 card into the Basement HTPC and do all of the PVR stuff from that machine only.

[Marbles_00]

You may have some problems. To give you a heads up...First, I totally agree with you and believe that there is still good use for older technology. That being said, I have a 866 PIII with 512 Meg of RAM used mainly for video editing. Besides that I have a 733 PIII with 396 Megs of RAM where I'm testing and learning xlobby on. It also has installed currently a PVR-150 (which I'm also learning to use). If I try and run Xlobby with WinTV2K...well it is pretty taxing on the system and the video gets all choppy. If your planning on running Xlobby and Sage and using the basement computer for PVR'ing duties, you may want to consider using one of the 1GIG systems. Now besides that I too have a PIII 550 with 196 Megs of RAM. I can't even run Xlobby on that machine. It loads, and does some pretty basic things. It takes forever to go from screen to screen and balks at DVD video watching as it does not have the horsepower to run both Xlobby and Zoom Player. That machine has a ATI Rage Fury Pro with VIVO installed and there is no way I could use Sage or any other software that requires WDM driver files to encode and watch video. It just does not have enough horsepower and would drop frames within seconds (I tried VirtualVCR and some other WDM recording software). What I ended up doing is using VirtualDub+VCR and using a WDM Wrapper and keeping everything in the VFW (Video for Windows) enviroment. That is proving worthwhile as I can record a 2 hour movie at a resolution of 640x480 and only drop less than 20 frames and utilizing about 80% of the CPU. That is when I'm using +VCR and turning off the preview. If I use a standalone version of VirtualDub, it is slightly less taxing on the system. I can turn on the preview and it only utilizes less than 60% of the CPU.

Anyways good luck to you, and who knows, you may have better luck.

Hope this was helpful

David

[art]

...and instead of using just the NAS Linux solution, I would need to use a full distro of Linux, and I am not that comfortable with Linux to the point that I would want to manage a Linux based server, with all of my media on it at this point. ...

Well, if you're not comfortable with Linux (I'm not comfortable myself - I just like to play around) than I would go with 2K - being in IT you probably have a disk somewhere - no matter how much you'll strip xp it still needs memory and horse power ... Well as you can see Marbles can't even run XL on his PIII 550.
Anyway, good luck to you ...

[berniejr]

Marbles_00 thanks for your testing results. I've been doing most of my testing on the 733 MHZ box running both WinTV2k and Sage, and I haven't run into many problems at all. I have noticed some lag occasionlly when running WinTV2k, but none with Sage. In either case I do believe that I will be running Sage server on the 1 Gig File Server so that should be ok. In terms of the HTPC's I planned on running the Sage Client from with in Xlobby. I guess I need to test out better what type of performance I receive while having the the Sage Client in sleep mode, trying to watch a DVD on the HTPC's. On the P3-550, I am able to run Xlobby and watch DVD's without any problems. I've also tested it the P2-333 laptop and it runs ok. The menus slection is a little slow but the DVD's play fine, which I'm sure is attributed to the laptop having a hardware DVD decoder for playback. I have not tested out how both the P3-550 and P2-333 handles Xlobby and Sage at the same time, if at all. I guess as a backup plan, If I can get Xlobby and Sage to work ok together on the 733, then I can probably get a hold of 2 more P3 - 733's at no cost and uses tose across the board as my HTPC's.

Art, yeah I definitely have access to Windows 2K, in case I run into performance issues.

[Marbles_00]

If you have your hands on hardware encoder/decoders, then you will have better luck on the 550 machine. For recording, the ATI card does not have hardware encoding capabilities, so since it has to do everything through software, it will be more stressful on the CPU. Now I would probably have better luck if I installed the PVR-150 card in that computer, but I'm saving if for when I finally can muster a good HTPC system. The same with decoding, everything is performed through software.

The other thing with my 733 is that currently that computer is the workhorse computer. It is the machine that I use to do every daily thing with, so it has a ton of software installled, with lot's of things running in the background. If I just stripped it down to operating system, Xlobby and Sage (or GBPVR), video playback would most likely be as smooth as butter.

I should also note that all my machines are running Win2K.

[berniejr]

Well I did some testing last night with the P2 - 333 laptop last night. I first loaded the Sage Client and it takes about 1 minute for it to open up. Once open I can browse around with no problems. Live TV works but as you could imagine it's very jerky. I could however schedule recordings and watch recrded content with nor problems. This may work becasue I doubt that I would ever use Sage to watch live tv from this machine anyway. I then tested Xlobby which takes about 1 minute to load, but once loaded functions pretty good. In terms of playing DVD's, well zoom takes about 15-20 seconds to start playing the movie, but once it starts it's ok. I'm sure this is where the hw decoder kicks in, otherwise I doubt if it would play at all. I tested a Divx encoded .avi as well, but I didn't have the latest codec installed no I wasn;t able to get any video. Also keep in mind that I only watched only about 15 minutes of the movie and it played smoothly, however I am aware that I may have experienced problems later on through the movie. Maybe this weekend I'll sit and watch a full movie to see how it handles.

Marbles_00 , I agree with you that your workhorse PC is probably lagged down with everything else that you have running on it. On all of these PC's I am going to make sure that they are stripped down to only the bare necessaties. Also I guess that I am not concerned about "top-level" performance from 2 of the 3 HTPC's. The one in the basement , which is my main theater , is the one that I want good performance from. With that in mind maybe I will shift the duties of the machines so that I'm using one of the 1 Gig machine for the Basement HTPC, use the other as a work horse/testing PC. I also start rethinking the Linux NAS solution, as the P2-233 that i have could be put to use. In either case I need to make a decision and move forward before I change my mind again.