Diskless + silent HD capable system as a sagetv client!

[insomniac]

One of these:
http://www.addonics.com/products/fla...der/adsacf.asp

or IDE version:
http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.14/.f

a 2-4gig CF card

One of these:
http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/it.A/id...=8&category=13

A silent 6600GT, mobo, reasonable processor,case of your choice, and BLAM

you got a silent sagetv client with no moving parts!

[dbfresh23]

This is a bad idea because of the read/write limits of CF cards. You'd wind up going through CF cards pretty quick trying to run an OS off it unless it was something like Windows XPE where it could just boot from the card and run in system memory. A better, though more expensive solution would be a Giga-byte IRAM system. It uses normal DDR Ram which should last quite a while.

[emok]

I considered the CF approach, but was slightly worried about the limited life of a CF card. That being said, if you're only using for the client, the read/writes should be less frequent. You just need to make sure you turn off virtual memory.

Plus, CF is so cheap now that when it goes bad, you can just get another.

EDIT: dbfresh, you beat me to it... the iRAM is interesting, but somewhat more expensive approach, but has the reliability/error correction of SDRAM.

[Humanzee]

I like the idea but I wonder if a CF card is really fast enough or large enough to install a full version on xp on and make this work effectively. There are solid state hard drives (flash disks) out but they are still quite expensive. I'm sure the price will get better soon. I hear that not only are they silent but use something rediculous like 5% of the power of a normal spinning disk style hard drive.

What is the point of the dc - dc power converter? you going to put that in your car?

I have been thinking about a silent client for a while, I had supposed that I would just use a laptop HD till an affordable flash disk was out.

You can get a 7600gt with passive cooling too.

[blade]

Originally Posted by Humanzee

What is the point of the dc - dc power converter? you going to put that in your car?

I believe that is so you can use an external brick for the powersupply. Look at the related items below it on the same page. Much less heat being generated inside the case so less cooling and less noise.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by blade

I believe that is so you can use an external brick for the powersupply. Look at the related items below it on the same page. Much less heat being generated inside the case so less cooling and less noise.

ah!

[insomniac]

im sure that CF would be plenty fast enough to run a client machine, with very little wear, due to the fact that most activity is streaming from the server. And like emok said, they are cheap. So if i need to replace one every year or two, its no big deal.

I agree that solidstate drives will be badass for this approach, but I dont see prices becoming reasonable for the next few years. I believe that 8gig is about $400 right now right?

I can burn up a few CF cards and wait

[insomniac]

The only reason i would think that a 6600GT would be better would be for power consumption and heat dissipation.

With the approach that I listed above, you only have 200 watts to burn!

Originally Posted by Humanzee

You can get a 7600gt with passive cooling too.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by insomniac

The only reason i would think that a 6600GT would be better would be for power consumption and heat dissipation.

With the approach that I listed above, you only have 200 watts to burn!

ah! ah! I guess it depends on the content you intend on pushing. I have had to tweak and tweak and tweak my system to get a satisfactory result with my 6600GT. if your not running HD at 1080p your probably fine with the 6600GT.

So tell me this, are you going to do it? I'd like to know how it works for you. We just moved and suddenly I have need for some clients. I guess its not a big loss if the CF drive doesn't work out. You can always revert to a laptop drive or something else quiet in an sata.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by insomniac

you got a silent sagetv client with no moving parts!

Originally Posted by insomniac

you only have 200 watts to burn!

Sounds almost like you're trying to talk someone else into going first.

[emok]

There must be someone on this forum who's using CF as their OS boot drive. There must be.

I'm tempted to try this now. $20 CF/IDE adapter and $60 4GB. But I'm more interested in the longevity aspect of it.

[Stealth1971]

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

This is a bad idea because of the read/write limits of CF cards. You'd wind up going through CF cards pretty quick trying to run an OS off it unless it was something like Windows XPE where it could just boot from the card and run in system memory. A better, though more expensive solution would be a Giga-byte IRAM system. It uses normal DDR Ram which should last quite a while.

Todays hi-speed flash card are more than fast enough... and if you have enough ram - 1GB+ you can turn off Virtual Memory Paging to the FS- which will completely reduce the writes to your flash drive. BTW - most flash drives have "smart writes" which manage which flash cells get written to -to spreadout wear over the whole disk to increase disk life.

We do this all of the time in the embedded world. I have linux machines that scream when booting from an IDE flash drive (BTW my whole OS build fits in 40MB and has most of the tools still)

Actually the easiest approach is:
- Do your WinXP install to a hard disk first
- Cut out all of the fat - unneeded services and components (there are plenty of guides for trimming XP)
- turn off virtual memory
- setup sage
- Then do disk image copy to the target flash drive

[Humanzee]

Anybody try this yet? Insomniac? Emok?

[Mark SS]

If anyone is seriously considering this, look at using nLite to get the XP install size down.

[doc]

If I have any money left at the end of the month I may see if I get time to try this out, I expect though that there'll be month left at the end of the money though

The g/f moans if I spend all weekend playin on the pc I'll have to train her better ......

[insomniac]

haha...your damn right I am! Actually I will be doing this if this thread doesnt pan out!

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...422#post173422

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Sounds almost like you're trying to talk someone else into going first.

[emok]

I haven't had a chance to try this out yet.. I think we're almost all in the same boat. Limited on time, budget, and WAF regarding time.

[newmedia42]

I'm a developer and have used XPEmbedded (XPe) quite a bit - there really isn't a whole lot of differences between XPe and XP Pro, the main difference is that you can completely customize what get's install with an XPE image - and we've built images that boot into a normal Windows environment with GUI typically in about 128megs, but if you go up to 256megs you can get IE and some other common components.

Now, if you try a normal XP install on a compact flash, you'll kill it in a couple of days or maybe a week or two - the problem is that CF's are rated for pretty much unlimited reads, but typically about 100k writes per sector. Some of the better CF's will flag a sector bad when it's exceeded it's write count, but others just fail.

But I thought XPe was just like XP Pro? How does it get around this limitation? Simple, there's something called EWF (Enhanced Write Filter) that you have to install and run on your system, you can read about it here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/8142...220&sid=global

There used to be a pretty good site for XPe developers that had EWF for download, but I looked through my bookmarks and couldn't find it - but if you search around I wouldn't be surprised if you could track it down. You also might look at some of the CD-booting XP images out there, I imagine they're using something like EWF to get around the swap file issues...

[dbfresh23]

Problem is that nobody here is going spend the $1100 that would be needed to buy the XPE dev kit and a license. If someone ever ported EWF to run on xp some how I'd be all over that. If MS was smart they'd start letting us consumers buy XPe, they'd surely sell a lot of copies to the enthusiast markets like HTPC.

[insomniac]

would you not just turn off your swap file? What else would write to the CF if it was a client? Everything else is a read from the server. I dont question your expertise, but Im not sure you are aware of what I would intend this box to be.

I.

Originally Posted by newmedia42

I'm a developer and have used XPEmbedded (XPe) quite a bit - there really isn't a whole lot of differences between XPe and XP Pro, the main difference is that you can completely customize what get's install with an XPE image - and we've built images that boot into a normal Windows environment with GUI typically in about 128megs, but if you go up to 256megs you can get IE and some other common components.

Now, if you try a normal XP install on a compact flash, you'll kill it in a couple of days or maybe a week or two - the problem is that CF's are rated for pretty much unlimited reads, but typically about 100k writes per sector. Some of the better CF's will flag a sector bad when it's exceeded it's write count, but others just fail.

But I thought XPe was just like XP Pro? How does it get around this limitation? Simple, there's something called EWF (Enhanced Write Filter) that you have to install and run on your system, you can read about it here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/8142...220&sid=global

There used to be a pretty good site for XPe developers that had EWF for download, but I looked through my bookmarks and couldn't find it - but if you search around I wouldn't be surprised if you could track it down. You also might look at some of the CD-booting XP images out there, I imagine they're using something like EWF to get around the swap file issues...