Can this old PC make it as a DVR?

[WhiteKnight]

I have an old SFF PC. I think it's a PIII 500, 20 GB HD, 128 RAM onboard video. There's no AGP slot, just two PCIs. Is there any chance of making this into a DVR, or is it just too old/low-end?

 

[DaveSimmons]

500 MHz is too slow for the software encoding that the under-$100 TV cards offer.

The $130 Hauppage card (PVR250? something like that, see Newegg) has hardware MPEG2 encoding, and that's good enough for DVD playback, but that's not fast enough for divx playback (if you care) and the hauppage website says you need at least a 733 MHz for playback where you're watching an earlier part of the program. Disk space needed is 1 - 2 GB per hour for MPEG2.

For that price you might be better off getting a tivo or the $149 iLo DVD recorder from walmart.com

 

[WhiteKnight]

I'd rather have a PC DTV that a Tivo. I'm just trying to think of a worthwhile use for this old thing. The case is really small so I figured it would fit nicely into my TV cabinet.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: WhiteKnight
I'd rather have a PC DTV that a Tivo. I'm just trying to think of a worthwhile use for this old thing. The case is really small so I figured it would fit nicely into my TV cabinet.

The enclosure might be usable if it takes a micro-ATX board, and you can get some of those priced quite reasonably for AMD XP cpu's in the 2000+ to 2500+ range, and the equivalent Intel cpu's to those -- also either AMD or Intel priced reasonably in that range. (EDIT: I was looking at some ads in Maximum PC, and it looked like Intel might have the edge in pricing right now. The AMD XP's are a little higher now than last summer when I did my own upgrading!) Just give it enough RAM, of which PC 2700 is fast enough, and make sure it stays cool enough (SFF cases have occasional problems about that, I believe).

I wrote that last sentence that way because so far I've used upright cases from mids- to full, for my builds, and am now transferring most of the guts from one of those over to an old Gateway horizontal box today that I hope not to have a lot of overheating problems with when it's done (AMD XP 2600+, TT Silent Boost HSF, Albatron KX400-8X MB, WD 120 Gb Hdd, Maxtor 20 Gb Hdd, Plextor DVD-R, Asus TV Tuner, eVGA FX 5200 graphics, 512 Mb DDR 2700).


:thumbsup:

 

[WhiteKnight]

Originally posted by: Kiwi

Originally posted by: WhiteKnight
I'd rather have a PC DTV that a Tivo. I'm just trying to think of a worthwhile use for this old thing. The case is really small so I figured it would fit nicely into my TV cabinet.

The enclosure might be usable if it takes a micro-ATX board, and you can get some of those priced quite reasonably for AMD XP cpu's in the 2000+ to 2500+ range, and the equivalent Intel cpu's to those -- also either AMD or Intel priced reasonably in that range. Just give it enough RAM, of which PC 2700 is fast enough, and make sure it stays cool enough (SFF cases have occasional problems about that, I believe).


:thumbsup:

Maybe I'll check that out. Do you have any recommendations?

 

[imported_Kiwi]

No, I can't name any micro-ATX motherboards that I've used. Up until the current stretch of several months, my own system building episodes tended to be spread out about 2 1/2 to 3 years apart over the last 15-16 years, and I tended to finish them up a lot more rapidly than now. Before that, it was pretty hard to try building your own PC's. But 6-7 years ago, when I was ready to move from P-I to P-II technology, local White Box builders were available who assembled custom setups to order for only $35 labor if you bought enough of the build from their salesmen.

So I let others build me two systems -- in 1998 and in 2001. I have just built/ rebuilt two this last summer and am presently rebuilding one of those already, but into a PVR/ TiVo rig this time. There are two styles of smaller motherboards than the current industry standard ATX. The micro-ATX is mid-size between an ATX and an "INX" (there's an "I" in the name somewhere -- "ITX" maybe?). Many of the better known brands are available in both ATX and micro-ATX sizes. Someone else around AT should be able to say "how big" these MB's are, or you can look at an MSI micro-ATX board's specifications page on the MSI web site. I know that they were making those boards.

There are a couple of eBay sellers who seemed to have many of the MSI micro-ATX's for sale lately. The smallest standard is much less standardized; many builders have their own version of what the ITX amounts to. But the one thing that sets these apart is the PCI riser on one end of the board. The motherboard has two parts, one of which sits at a 90 degree angle to the rest, and the PCI cards plug into that, parallel to the motherboard surface. True PC hobbyists aren't very interested in such boards, since they almost always rely on internal graphics and have no AGP slot.

If your computer's case is made like that (and a quick re-read of your question seems to say that it is), you are not as likely to be able to re-use it as you would be if it conformed to the micro-ATX form factor. Here is MSI's URL:

http://www.msicomputer.com/pro...asp?class=mb&cpu=2

 

[WhiteKnight]

Thanks, Kiwi. I'll check it out.