[mythtvnz] New list member - Hardware recommendations

[Mike Brady]

Quoting Paulgir <paulgir at gmail.com>:

> On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:58:15 +1300, Paulgir <paulgir at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>> Message: 3
>>> Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:46:20 +1300
>>> From: Curtis Walker <sultanoswing at gmail.com>
>>> Subject: Re: [mythtvnz] New list member - Hardware recommendations
>>> To: MythTV in NZ <mythtvnz at lists.linuxnut.co.nz>
>>> Message-ID:
>>> 	<CAPzMZFEJi-pjC=DwiDDiD1hUyvGStK3o2Zo3+ZJYx==wP9MViA at mail.gmail.com>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>>> On 10 January 2012 18:49, criggie <criggie at criggie.org.nz> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > I'd recommend that the boot drive is a small (say 64GB) SSD as it
>>>> makes
>>>> > trying out new stuff and rebooting very fast!
>>>> > Cheers Douglas
>>>>
>>>> >> My only comment would be to add a 2nd small hard drive for the OS
>>>> and
>>>> >> MySQL. ?Leave the 1TB dedicated to just your recordings.
>>>> >> - Wade
>>>>
>>>> > I have a spare 160 GB drive for the OS .I did consider an SSD but as
>>>> I
>>>> > have the 160 I will leave that for the future.
>>>> > Paul
>>>>
>>>> Paul - I agree with Wade, so using the 160 is a great idea for OS.
>>>> Personally I'd love some SSDs but they're not reasonably priced yet.
>>>> Its only TV - the difference in speed between normal HDD and SSD isn't
>>>> going to make any real difference.
>>>> You can put a swap file on whichever of your hard drives is fastest, if
>>>> you need swap.
>>>> Adding more storage later is straightforward... just tell myth that it
>>>> can
>>>> store in /myth1, /myth2, ... /mythX ? No need to mess about with raid
>>>> and
>>>> md devices.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Now is a terrible time to purchase a drive - so unless you absolutely
>>> have to, recycle that 160GB.
>>> In early October, Western Digital and Seagate had a junket in
>>> Thailand. WD was buying Hitachi GST and already owns the late Maxtor,
>>> and Seagate was buying Samsung. Both were well aware of this and had
>>> been for over a year, and appear to have wanted to come to an
>>> arrangement as to how they wanted to divide the market between each
>>> other, now that there would be effectively only two big hard disk
>>> manufacturers.
>>> Thanks also to July floods in Thailand they decided what might be best
>>> was to arrange for the big OEMs to buy huge loads in bulk to offset
>>> the Q4 losses they would have from the purchases otherwise (and shore
>>> up for any potential flood damage, which they?d use as the reason for
>>> the resulting shortage, despite being fully insured.
>>> They held another ?consultation? in Thailand on October 17th and
>>> appear to have decided this would make a?brilliant?excuse, and they?d
>>> need the funds on tap to refurb the flood-damaged plants afterwards,
>>> and agreed with each other to fix the prices, jacking them up
>>> dramatically across the board: despite it only taking an estimate of 8
>>> weeks to refurbish the machinery after the floods subsided?in fact, it
>>> was in full production again by November 30th, well ahead of schedule
>>> (they rushed it), although one building was still under 2 foot of
>>> water by early December. This was offset ?WD used Hitachi GST?s
>>> various un-flooded production facilities to produce the shortfall of
>>> WD drives.
>>> Effect of the price-fixing was immediate: the price pretty much
>>> doubled-to-tripled across the board, sometimes even higher, and
>>> retailers started limiting supply. Profits were high and enormous
>>> insurance claims had gone in, and the executives appeared to have been
>>> in quite a congratulatory mood by mid-December - production was back
>>> up to what appears to be full capacity, prices were still flying high,
>>> sales were still limited, they?d cherry-picked the last of the
>>> pre-flood drives for sale to OEMs at inflated prices, and were selling
>>> the brand new drives to the wholesale retail channel for almost twice
>>> what they were worth before October. The executives have pocketed a
>>> very nice Christmas bonus.
>>> There's more: The first lot of drives off the refurbished production
>>> lines will very likely be very dodgy, as the equipment was, frankly,
>>> repaired and replaced in a hurry and has not had time to properly
>>> calibrate. The solution? Increase firmware tolerances and reduce
>>> warranties. The OEMs don't want these drives and neither should you if
>>> you value your data and the value of your purchase dollar.
>>> Don't believe it? Check out the prices of HDD storage compared to 6
>>> months ago. And keep an eye out on the warranty times.
>>>
>>
>> I was surprised that the prices weren't lower - so that explains it.
>> I wonder what chance of them coming down in the future if WD and Seagate
>> have a duopoly?
>> I tested the system with an Ubuntu 11.10 live USB stick.I get HDMI video
>> straight off.
>> No sound yet via HDMI.I will temporarily install 11.10 and install the
>> Nvidia drivers
>> to see if that gives me sound also look at ALSA mixer settings.
>> I fitted Arctic Cooler F Pro fans to the case - these are very quiet.
>> Cheers
>> Paul
>
>
>
> I had some trouble installing the OS that was due to the UEFI BIOS not
> liking
> a IDE HDD with a SATA converter on it.But I got that sorted.
> I've got the graphics card  feeding video and audio down the HDMI cable.
> I'm just having a little trouble getting the HVR-2200 to work with the Myth
> Backend I installed for testing.
>
> I posted a thread on Ubuntu Forums to see if I get some answers.
>
> Cheers
>
> Paul
>
>

Would the problem be that the driver is loading but says "Unsupported  
board detected"?