Can I use a dual PII?

[xinjingqiao]

I have only begun to dabble in multimedia but am already beginning to see the need to have 2 computers. I have a 2.4 ghz celeron now that I am trying to use with everything and will soon resurrect a dual pentium II, 333 Mhz processor. I am hoping to use Linux on the computer to do the multimedia thing to allow me to create the larger files needed to capture videotape and yet allow me to stay away from XP - I HATE WINDOWS!!!. I am also hoping to use my scsi based Iomega Buzz card. It worked well when I first used it but the quality was not very good using standard IDE drives - most of the people that got good quality used SCSI 3 drives which were really, really expensive 5 years ago. I know the most obvious solution would be to use the celeron for the capture and editing and leave the PII for the mundane life but is there any way the PII could be used? I like that motherboard because it is very, very reliable...though resolution on the built in video card is only 1024X ???

[Gurm]

Unless the software is written to take advantage of the dual-CPU setup, you're basically looking at being speed limited by the PII... so yeah you could use it but it would take days to do an encode.

[disturbed1]

The Buzz card has native support in current linux distros, and most older distros.

Your MB most likely, only has an ATA 33 ide bus, get a Promise ATA 100/133 PCI card (also supported by linux), and attach a capture drive to it.

Opt for a distro that has a light GUI like ICEWM or XFCE. KDE and GNOME can be hogs on older machines. LIVES and Kino are decent Linux capturing/editing apps. AVIDEMUX is VituralDub for Linux, except supports MPEG1/2 encoding, and AC3 encoding. MPEG encoding is done by Transcode and FFMPEG, AC3 is through FFMPEG also.

Q DVD Author, DVD Styler, and Varsha are GUIs for the DVD authoring package.

I have an old Zoran based card (Bravdo) that uses the Buzz drivers in Linux. I've had great luck with Mepis, Suse, and Mandrake. And with a bit of compiling and lib hunting, the best/fastest results with Vector Linux. I have a Cele 1000 though, not sure if Vector is compiled for SMP or not, but the other distros should have a SMP kernel as an option. Mepis comes with a decent set of video programs installed, and being based off Debian, I found it the easiest to find and add new ones.

[hexxisoft]

P2 isn't horrible when encoding to mpeg1, i did it in 3/4th real time back in the day. AVI and mpeg2, wow, those were quite a pain though.

[xinjingqiao]

Wow!! Someone actually knows about the Buzz? I AM impressed I thought it was a great idea that was ahead of it's time financially...What is an SMP kernal? Is it what lets 2 cpus work together? Is 256 MB of RAM going to be adequate or is 512? I would prefer to use this board to do anything that requires leaving the computer on for hours and hours because it is a very, very stable motherboard - a server . It also has a built in SCSI but SCSI hard drives of the size that I need are too much $$$ I used a utility to check the throughput of my 7200 rmp 80 GB IDE and it was just a bit faster than the specs say that the Buzz liked...what cost $100 these days cost about $1,500 5 years ago when the buzz was new, which, I think was why the Buzz never got very good performance from the average user. It sounds like you are indirectly saying that the celeron would be a better choice and use the P2 for common tasks? I could do that and just install DOS...I still like DOS, more than windows, which is why I am anxious to learn about Linux - toss that GUI stuff out the window, put the mouse in a trap where it belongs Ultimately I would like to forsake Windows altogether...has anyone tried Novel's "Outlook" look alike product? But regarding MM, I need to either get into XP or Linux to break away from the file size limitation in the 9X OS' Does DOS have the same file limitation? Is there any videoediting software in DOS? I know...dream on

[BJ_M]

i tried to do some mpeg encoding on a dual compaq 1600 333 server once (had scsi raid, lots of of memory , the works) ...

if you have a week to wait, a 4 gig file is no issue ..

[xinjingqiao]

Wow! I think I will definitely use the celeron for the video...use the PII for my common stuff. I hope I can save enough pennies to get a true P4

Thanks

[disturbed1]

Novell's new(er) email client is called Ximan. It's almost an exact clone of Outlook. I use Opera's Mail client for the most part. I can't stand the way KDE has evolved, or certain Gnome apps. If I wanted to run Windows I would, I don't need a clone. I don't use Linux because it's better, I use it because it's different (<end rant>)

Your Cele would be much better off doing the encoding. My dual PIII 600 is just slightly faster than my Cele 1700, I don't feel like doing the math, but I'm sure you can figure it out Don't forget to factor in that PII's don't have SSE, only mmx.

There is no TMPG, CCE, ProCoder, or Mainconcept MPEG encoder for linux. You have FFMPEG, which can yield decent results at a decent speed or fantastic results at an ungodly slow speed. Transcode is there also, but doesn't have the quality nor the speed when compared to FFMPEG IMO

Min. specs for a decent Linux system for day to day tasks (music, watch TV/Videos, surf the net, some office apps) would be PII 300 with at least 256 RAM. XFREE and XORG, the programs that display any and all type of graphics on your screen will take all the memory you have. XFREE 4.40 swallows 768 with out even thinking about it. But I also have a system with 384 RAM, and never touches the swap file when editing with AVI Demux, using XFCE as a Window Manager. But there are command line programs to browse the net (likns/lynx) mp3 player (mpeg123) cd/dvd burners (cdrecord/prodvd), linux also has mouse support inside the shell. Makes copy & paste rather easy during system administration. Without a GUI, Linux would run at a snappy pace using a 486 with 32mb of memory, but so does Windows 3.1.

Head over to www.distrowatch.com and check out some of the distros. Check some of the live CD distros like Knoppix, Slax, Mepis, PCLinuxOS...... these boot from CD and run without installing anything to your hard drive. Should give you an idea of what to expect.

Mandrake (PCLinuxOS) has plenty of bleeding edge apps already compiled, ready to install, with lots of hand holding. Debian has the best package management for linux, and Slackware (Vector, Slax) are for those people who like to get their hands dirty.

SMP - Symmetric Multi-Processing