One happy customer!

[leetony]

I think this is the best $60 I spent on software! Just had an idea... I will try to build a client computer that boots on a flash card/flash drive and run Sage client on it? Like to build a few noiseless computer for bedrooms! Think it will work?

[sshapiro63]

Good luck with your project! A noiseless computer would be great.

The best I have done is to get a very low noise computer by using an Antec power supply and chassis fan, Seagate drive, and Zalman 7000ALCU heatsink/fan. Each components listed is very quiet. Almost can't here the thing running. Works great in the family room, but not quiet enough for the bedroom

[-LD]

sure it will work, there's no reason it won't

make an image, put it on a flash that is on a CF to IDE adapter and away you go

get yourself an Epia board with the circuit board power supplies, no fan, and you are done

very easy and very doable

keep in mind most flash cards have a finite amount of writes before they are toast...though the main storage would be a server in some other room, you will still be accessing the card so longevity may become an issue

[sshapiro63]

Do you think the EPIA works okay for SageTV viewing? I have heard mixed reviews on the platform.

[-LD]

that's something i'm not sure about...i've heard its mpeg2 playback isn't so great...perhaps the newest board works a lot better but it does require a fan unless you get something like the heatsink case

to be honest, this is something i've wanted to try out actually...as a client it may work well

[Narflex]

I use an EPIA box for my SageTV viewing.

Anyone know if its possible to boot Windows over the network? I've seen this setting in the BIOS to boot from the NIC, but I'm not sure how it would work (or if Windows even supports it). I'd LOVE to be able to take the HDD out of the client and just create another partition on the server that the client boots from.

[-LD]

can't boot windows from a network...windows is too dumb...linux you can boot over a network though

*cough*get to work on a linux client*cough*

but you can boot windows from a compact flash...then you have no moving parts and no noise

what EPIA are you using and how is playback? that's what i'd like to use for clients eventually

[Narflex]

I use an EPIA M9000. Playback's great. I talk about it in various threads on the forum.

Linux....hmmm....ever wondered why Sage is written in Java?

[-LD]

sweet...that's the 933, right?

java is a good thing in the hands of a good programmer

[sshapiro63]

How is the EPIA with audio playback (mp3 and wave)? How about other video formats such as wma or divx? Does it have enough "oomph" to work with these formats without skipping/stuttering?

I would also like to know if any of the EPIA units can accept an add in AGP graphics card?

[-LD]

EPIA units only have a single PCI slot (can be expanded to two with a riser)

audio playback should be good as it generally isn't as demanding as video...i think the super-high bitrate divx has some problems on playback

[sshapiro63]

I tried on of the Shuttle XPC units for a weekend. It is a small form factor system and takes up very little space. Big problem is that it is noisy. I believe that the default fan can be replaced with a quieter unit to make the unit more bedroom friendly.

If the Shuttle can be made less noisy it could be a good solution. The one I like it the latest unit based on the Intel 865 chipset. Should have no problems playing back any type of audio/video with a P4 2.4 installed.

[leetony]

Hmm, EPIA should be a good board for my noiseless client. But I just checked the system requirement for XP home edition and it needs 1.5gb of space. I was thinking about putting in a 1gb flash card, but I guess I need at least a 2gb to work. 2gb is around $600!...

Narafax: are you using a Casetronic mini-ITX case? with 2.5" hard drives? Wonder how quiet those 2.5 harddrives are...

[mlar]

If you are interested in seeing how I setup my system, using only EPIA's, check out http://mta.techno.org/sage/

Getting it noiseless is a whole different issue though. Forget about booting Windows on flash. You might be able to get it done, at tremendous cost, and the flash memory has a limited number of read/writes. Network booting is out of the question as well (for windows).

One possible solution could be to use Windows 98, put everything onto a flash card as an image, allocate a RAM disk, and copy all the data from the flash card over to the RAM disk.. It would be a mess to maintain that though.

My suggestion would be to get a low RPM notebook harddrive. Very little noise and power consumption. Or hope that there will be a linux client soon I use a notebook drive (got a 40GB drive for 99 dollars at Fry's, much cheaper than any flash card, but, you can hear it when it's is reading from the disk (the ticking noise). I can't hear the motor when it's in the case. But if you run a pure client, there wont be any disk access, so it isn't a problem. You could potentially get the harddrives to spin down as well (powersave mode), but you probably have to kill a number of XP services to make sure the drive isn't accessed.

Another alternative to a flash card would be a PCMCIA drive of some sort, I know that Toshiba has a 5GB PCMCIA drive.

A linux client would make all this so much easier though. Except that Linux doesn't have drivers for the MPEG-2 decoder on the EPIA, and so on..