Currently i have a asus a7v (900mhz) 512ram
hauppage pvr-500 (dual tuner) (Does not work with VIA Chipsets)
Asus GeForce3 Deluxe (w/TV-Out)
soundblaster 5.1
wifi card
100gb and 120gb hardrives.

also have 2 spare intel celeron d 336's (2.8 , LGA775, 533mhz)

I know this setup can not handle running both front and backend. So my question is which of the following setups would work best

Setup 1 (1 box front and backend dual cpu's)
Find a motherboard that supports dual celeron D's (recommendations?)
Use Hauppage Tuner and Geforce and run a front/Backend system all in one

Setup 2 (1 box front and backend single cpu)
Same as setup 1 only using a regular single cpu motherboard

Setup 3 (split machines)
Front End would be the machine above (900mhz a7v )minus the tuner card wifi to connect to backend
Backend would be using one or two of the celeron processors. hard wired into lan

Is there any benefit to running two seperate machines if one machine can handle both? and how feasible is using wifi (802.11g) for the interconnect if i do split.

Thanks for any help.

-Adam

Hi,

I would suggest trying it as a one box machine, I can run on a 400 mhz Dell, marginal play out until I switch to tv out (pvr-350) It won't do HD of course.

Mike

i was except for the small fact that the pvr-500 and the via chipset on the mb don't like to play together. so whenever the card is active i get random reboots every 5-10 min.

Hi,
Ok, however I have used via chips and not had issues.. Before carving in stone, can you substute the video card? maybe reduce the agp window in cmos (if card is agp), try different pci slots, run memtest from the cd, check tier 1-2-3 in the hardware section.

Also the 533mhz should work, move the drive to one of those for testing. aslaconf should fix the new audio, netcardconfig should restore network and a quick and simple trick for the xserver is to set it for "vesa" You can change the xserver before moving the drive as that will work on most everything, just not the best performance.

I think someone once said "the possibilites were endless"...
Mike

i can try some of those. I was fairly sure it was a via/hauppage problem because i have another machine (asus a8v mb) that gave me a similar error random rebooting when trying to access the tuner and their are reports of hauppage pvr-500 and via chipset problems in some of the other threads and hauppages site. The current setup (a7v 900mhz) seems to let me watch tv fine, it is only when it goes to record that it reboots. i don't have a motherboard for the 533's yet (that was part of my original post was recomendations) i already reduced the window for the card (it is agp) but i do have one other that i can try (need to find it). i'm know too sure how the video card might be a problem if the errors only seem to happen when it tries to record. i'll let you know

also not sure if i wasn't clear before but the 533 i'm refering to are intel celeron D 2.8Ghz, 533FSB , not 533mhz cpu's

Hi,
My over sight, damn glasses

Recording doesn't use the video card, is almost a direct hose into the drive, dma turned on? there are some drive tweaks also. Anyway, best wishes on getting things to run smoothly.

Music, eye candy, and some of the other features ok? Mythstream?

Nice thing is if it really gets messed up from poking at it, it is easy to re-do as an auto upgrade. You did do a backup right?

Have a great day!
Mike