24 Oct
2012
24 Oct
'12
12:46 p.m.
Hi all.
A little of your expertise and experience would be appreciated here. I am aiming to build
a new computer to go in my old rack-mounted case, which has basically been out of service
since I got my laptop some years ago. The main parts I have chosen based on what are used
in some of the Ubuntu based video servers here at work. But they run in an X-less
environment (using Firefox Chromless interface, controlled remotely via http from any
(generally Windows) computer on the network) and use Blackmagic cards for HD video ingest
and playout.
Most likely I will be hoping to get a stable Fedora/CCRMA install working on this computer
(something I'm sorry to say I have attempted a few times on the laptop and failed.) I
do suspect I will be persuaded to install Win7 on it at some point though. Why, you ask?
Because it is due to be used with a mobile sound system for a combination of digital
DJing, some VJing and probably some audio recording too. Although I will try and persuade
people to use Mixxx (or use their own laptop) too many people are more used to, and have
their controllers configured for, Tracktor or Serato. Of course it depends on it being
commercially viable for me buying a licence for one of these and for basic, vinyl
controlled digital DJing I believe Mixxx is now sufficient (although yet to test their
claims.) On the VJing side the argument seems just as strong, with there being nothing to
even remotely challenge Resolume out there! Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.
(And also a good place to discuss Linux (Live) Video. I joined the sister list to this one
on the subject but don't think I'm yet to see a single email on it.) But as I said
I want to try and go the Linux (and predominantly FOSS) route at first.
I start with the few questions on the chosen pieces first:
Motherboard I am looking at is the Asus P8Z68-V Pro/Gen3. As this is going to be very
mobile I want to use the RAID option of the card. I was thinking 3x WD Caviar Black 1TB
drives, connected to SATA 3Gb/s ports using RAID5 (cheaper than 2x 2TB drives and same
redundancy.) I believe this is on the Z68 chipset. Does this kind of RAID play well with
Linux? I would want multiple partitions across this main space so OS(s) and data both have
redundancy.
Specs for the video servers used here are i7 2600k but I see the 2700k is only a few quid
more so assume the upgrade would make sense?
I currently have a RME RPM (useful due the the dual Phono input meaning no prestage is
needed for vinyl control of DJ software.) I only have the HDSP card for the laptop though.
Would you recommend the PCIe or standard PCI HSDP card for use on Linux? At some point I
would quite like to also get a Multiface for recording multiple streams at once but that
is probably some time away and if I can get it all working with the RPM I'm sure it
will with the Multiface.
Graphics card recommendations??? As stated some VJing work so will need something
reasonable but I don't think it needs to be up with what is needed for the latest
games. Budget is flexible-ish... I've already extended it once ;-)
Although maybe I should scale it back a little and go for a cheaper motherboard and i5
processor of some kind? At this specification it would seem silly not to use it as my main
rig!
Sorry for going on and on so much. Many thanks to all that have managed to read and digest
everything I have written. I have a backlog of posts from this list I will read through
now, before getting to any replies I hope to receive from you ;-)
TL/DR:
Z68 - works with RAID5 on SATA2 ports OK?
RME HDSP card - PCI or PCIe?
Gfx card recommendations??
Or persuade me to go for a cheaper rig as I probably don't really need all that...
Regards, Dale.
27 Oct
27 Oct
10:20 p.m.
On Wed, 24 Oct 2012 10:46:49 +0000 Kaza Kore <dj_kaza(a)hotmail.com>
wrote:
TL/DR:
Z68 - works with RAID5 on SATA2 ports OK?
RME HDSP card - PCI or PCIe?
Gfx card recommendations??
Or persuade me to go for a cheaper rig as I probably don't really
need all that...
Regards, Dale.
Regarding the raid5:
http://www.miracleas.com/BAARF/
And we (as the business I work for) have dismissed hw-raid in general.
A while back you only got problems if your controller broke and you
didn't have the same again. Nowadays you even get problems when you
update the firmware of the controller (or when your cold-standby
doesn't have the correct fw-version). Just stay away from it.
For the Mobo: Use something from a brand known for quality. Asus might
do okayish laptops, their boards are almost as crap as asrock. For an
intel-system, why not use an intel board? The higher price is _small_
when you take the higher quality into account. High-quality boards
last much longer and work better.
PCI is dead, any graphics card with linux-support is good. Now the
salesman in me takes over: intel is actively supporting the
linux-community also in the graphics field, not like nvidia. Yes, we
are an intel-reseller. We only see other hardware when its broken and
the customers want us to fix it or get the data of from it.
Have fun,
Arnold
10:50 p.m.
On Sun, October 28, 2012 7:19 am, Arnold Krille wrote:
On Wed, 24 Oct 2012 10:46:49 +0000 Kaza Kore
<dj_kaza(a)hotmail.com>
wrote:
Alot of people would love to upgrade their older pci cards to new mobos.
It's becoming a real hassle to find boards that allow that.
TL/DR:
Z68 - works with RAID5 on SATA2 ports OK?
RME HDSP card - PCI or PCIe?
Gfx card recommendations??
Or persuade me to go for a cheaper rig as I probably don't really
need all that...
Regards, Dale.
Regarding the raid5:
http://www.miracleas.com/BAARF/
And we (as the business I work for) have dismissed hw-raid in general.
A while back you only got problems if your controller broke and you
didn't have the same again. Nowadays you even get problems when you
update the firmware of the controller (or when your cold-standby
doesn't have the correct fw-version). Just stay away from it.
For the Mobo: Use something from a brand known for quality. Asus might
do okayish laptops, their boards are almost as crap as asrock. For an
intel-system, why not use an intel board? The higher price is _small_
when you take the higher quality into account. High-quality boards
last much longer and work better.
PCI is dead, any graphics card with linux-support is good.
Depends if you want to have an open source driver without acceleration or
a closed source drive with acceleration.
Now the
salesman in me takes over: intel is actively supporting the
linux-community also in the graphics field, not like nvidia.
I agree that Intel has become very supportive of Linux. They also have a
dedicated Linux department. Out of interest which chipsets do you
recommend from Intel that fully support accelerated graphics?
Yes, we
are an intel-reseller. We only see other hardware when its broken and
the customers want us to fix it or get the data of from it.
Have fun,
Arnold
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
28 Oct
28 Oct
12:18 a.m.
On Sat, October 27, 2012 1:50 pm, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
As an owner of an older PCI audio interface... I have been putting some
thought to this. I remember that there was a time not too long ago when
people were using old DX100s as routers. Boot from a floppy and run in
memory (not much either), no drive, no fan in the PSU or on the CPU.
Maybe instead of getting rid of the old MB... pull the graphics card
(first thing to go anyway) Run a minimal linux (terminal only) that runs
netjack. Now you have an ethernet sound interface. Plug into the new box
(maybe on it's own NIC) and run netjack instead of jackd.
--
Len Ovens
www.OvenWerks.net
PCI is dead,
Alot of people would love to upgrade their older pci cards to new mobos.
It's becoming a real hassle to find boards that allow that.
12:36 a.m.
On Sun, October 28, 2012 9:18 am, Len Ovens wrote:
On Sat, October 27, 2012 1:50 pm, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
As an owner of an older PCI audio interface... I have been putting some
thought to this. I remember that there was a time not too long ago when
people were using old DX100s as routers. Boot from a floppy and run in
memory (not much either), no drive, no fan in the PSU or on the CPU.
Maybe instead of getting rid of the old MB... pull the graphics card
(first thing to go anyway) Run a minimal linux (terminal only) that runs
netjack. Now you have an ethernet sound interface. Plug into the new box
(maybe on it's own NIC) and run netjack instead of jackd.
This is a proven method for building out a relatively cheap high
performance netjack cluster.
Taking it a step further it can also be used for rendering with blender
and cinelerra. In that case having the graphics card is also useful.
--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
PCI is
dead,
Alot of people would love to upgrade their older pci cards to new mobos.
It's becoming a real hassle to find boards that allow that. 
1:37 p.m.
On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 6:36 PM, Patrick Shirkey
<pshirkey(a)boosthardware.com> wrote:
On Sun, October 28, 2012 9:18 am, Len Ovens wrote:
Surprisingly, the place I buy parts from has 22 Core i? motherboards
that range from 1-4 PCI slots and 20 new AMD A-Series (socket FM2). I
was happy to see that, as I have to build a new system and I'd like to
use my old PCI Delta 66.
On a related note, does anyone have any experience with AMD A-series?
While I would like to support Intel, AMD seems a lot more
cost-effective, and the built-in graphics are better.
On Sat, October 27, 2012 1:50 pm, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
As an owner of an older PCI audio interface... I have been putting some
thought to this. I remember that there was a time not too long ago when
people were using old DX100s as routers. Boot from a floppy and run in
memory (not much either), no drive, no fan in the PSU or on the CPU.
Maybe instead of getting rid of the old MB... pull the graphics card
(first thing to go anyway) Run a minimal linux (terminal only) that runs
netjack. Now you have an ethernet sound interface. Plug into the new box
(maybe on it's own NIC) and run netjack instead of jackd.
This is a proven method for building out a relatively cheap high
performance netjack cluster.
Taking it a step further it can also be used for rendering with blender
and cinelerra. In that case having the graphics card is also useful.
--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user PCI is
dead,
Alot of people would love to upgrade their older pci cards to new mobos.
It's becoming a real hassle to find boards that allow that. 
8:32 p.m.
On Sun, 2012-10-28 at 08:37 -0400, Paul Coccoli wrote:
Surprisingly, the place I buy parts from has 22 Core
i? motherboards
that range from 1-4 PCI slots and 20 new AMD A-Series (socket FM2). I
was happy to see that, as I have to build a new system and I'd like to
use my old PCI Delta 66.
On a related note, does anyone have any experience with AMD A-series?
While I would like to support Intel, AMD seems a lot more
cost-effective, and the built-in graphics are better.
Are there cheap PCIe MIDI IO cards available? Soon or later I need to
get a new mobo and in addition to my PCIe sound card, I've got 2 Envy24
PCI cards used for MIDI. USB-MIDI is crap.
10:22 p.m.
On Sun, October 28, 2012 11:37 pm, Paul Coccoli wrote:
On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 6:36 PM, Patrick Shirkey
<pshirkey(a)boosthardware.com> wrote:
I am running a fusion chipset for the past year. It can handle 1080p and
is a pretty powerful solution for Linux multimedia and gaming.
At the time I installed the OS I had to use the AMD catalyst drivers
provided by AMD to get acceleration working because they were not
available for squeeze. It was a bit of a hassle to get debian installed
but I managed to do it in the end.
The driver management tool has a couple of minor bugs but those might have
been fixed by now.
One thing to note is that AMD have recently decided to drop support for
<5000 series chipsets in their catalyst drivers. My notebook which is only
2 years old has a 4200 series gpu and the open source radeon drivers in
Debian Wheezy do not support acceleration. Debian team has recently made
the transition to the newer version of X which is not supported by the
older catalyst drivers IIUC. So to install a version of the "older"
catalyst drivers on debian that would run on wheezy I had to enable the
experimental repos. However with Fedora 17 that is not a problem and the
acceleration is enabled by default when installing the OS.
Overall, my experience with AMD drivers is that it is a pita with Debian.
With older versions of Fedora it was also a pita because I had to enable
the rawhide repos to install the catalyst drivers to get acceleration
which was not obvious unless you knew here to look for the info. In
addition the driver package provided by AMD would not install correctly on
f16. I haven't tried the AMD package with f17 as everything is working
ootb.
--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
On Sun, October 28, 2012 9:18 am, Len Ovens wrote:
Surprisingly, the place I buy parts from has 22 Core i? motherboards
that range from 1-4 PCI slots and 20 new AMD A-Series (socket FM2). I
was happy to see that, as I have to build a new system and I'd like to
use my old PCI Delta 66.
On a related note, does anyone have any experience with AMD A-series?
While I would like to support Intel, AMD seems a lot more
cost-effective, and the built-in graphics are better.
On Sat, October 27, 2012 1:50 pm, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
This is a proven method for building out a relatively cheap high
performance netjack cluster.
Taking it a step further it can also be used for rendering with blender
and cinelerra. In that case having the graphics card is also useful.
--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user > PCI is dead,
Alot of people would love to upgrade their older pci cards to new
mobos.
It's becoming a real hassle to find boards that allow that.
As an owner of an older PCI audio interface... I have been putting some
thought to this. I remember that there was a time not too long ago when
people were using old DX100s as routers. Boot from a floppy and run in
memory (not much either), no drive, no fan in the PSU or on the CPU.
Maybe instead of getting rid of the old MB... pull the graphics card
(first thing to go anyway) Run a minimal linux (terminal only) that
runs
netjack. Now you have an ethernet sound interface. Plug into the new
box
(maybe on it's own NIC) and run netjack instead of jackd.
30 Oct
30 Oct
1:54 p.m.
Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2012 22:19:39 +0200
From: arnold(a)arnoldarts.de
To: linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
Subject: Re: [LAU] OT: New i7 rig, Gfx card recomendations and more.
On Wed, 24 Oct 2012 10:46:49 +0000 Kaza Kore <dj_kaza(a)hotmail.com>
wrote:
TL/DR:
Z68 - works with RAID5 on SATA2 ports OK?
RME HDSP card - PCI or PCIe?
Gfx card recommendations??
Or persuade me to go for a cheaper rig as I probably don't really
need all that...
Regards, Dale.
Regarding the raid5:
http://www.miracleas.com/BAARF/
And we (as the business I work for) have dismissed hw-raid in general.
A while back you only got problems if your controller broke and you
didn't have the same again. Nowadays you even get problems when you
update the firmware of the controller (or when your cold-standby
doesn't have the correct fw-version). Just stay away from it.
With something that is going to be quite so mobile I really preferably
do want to be running the OS off a RAIDed drive! Sure I could use a
single drive and regularly ghost it to a backup one at home but this
isn't going to help me if it gets damaged on the way to a party. Well
guess it might if I also take the spare and backup after every event...
RAID seems so much more suited to the job though!
For the Mobo: Use something from a brand known for quality. Asus might
do okayish laptops, their boards are almost as crap as asrock. For an
intel-system, why not use an intel board? The higher price is _small_
when you take the higher quality into account. High-quality boards
last much longer and work better.
Asus known as being shit? I admit I haven't done much researched into
hardware since I built my last desktop I think in 2001 and that definitely
didn't seem to be the consensus then. And it seems weird that we would
chose a known poor component for video ingest servers which are to be on
24/7, although it is already the third revision of the build. So what
would you recommend?
PCI is dead, any graphics card with linux-support is good. Now the
salesman in me takes over: intel is actively supporting the
linux-community also in the graphics field, not like nvidia. Yes, we
are an intel-reseller. We only see other hardware when its broken and
the customers want us to fix it or get the data of from it.
Yeah PCI is definitely on the way out! But dead just yet? Almost every
board I've looked at has at least 1 for legacy reasons. I guess the same
was true for ISA for a while after PCI came out though and those were
gone off 99% of boards many years ago... My thoughts were more trying
to ensure that the support for the PCIe version of the HDSP card was as
supported as the PCI version.
So I will look at an ATI card then :-)
Although I am slightly leaning towards trying to get my old P4 computer
back up and working and see quite how underpowered for what I want to do
it turns out to be. I think the graphics card is the only fully dead component...
Cheers to everybody who has responded.
Dale.
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
7 Nov
7 Nov
1:35 p.m.
OK lack of replies to that...
I think my initial tests are going to be trying to get my antiquated P4 system running on
what I have. Asus P4C800-ED motherboard, 3GHz Intel P4 CPU, 2GB RAM, graphics card which I
think might be knackered... If I find this to be seriously struggling (or components
failed) then I will still look at a new board. Any serious thoughts on this? Think I might
actually have more RAM lying around at least...
Due to the feedback on my initial choices seeming very much in the negative, even though
they have mainly come from (video encoding) servers running Ubuntu linux and in use 24/7,
I wonder what you people would recommend?
Budget £500-700. Items required:
Motherboard (With at least 1x old PCI slot, preferably 2. Also must have onboard RAID1.
(Yes I decided to listen to the points about RAID5 even though they are very much mainly
aimed at large servers, not a small, 3 hard drive array in a small system. I still want a
protected RAID though!))
CPU
RAM
Graphics card
HDD x2
Case and peripherals I already have. Audio Interface is most likely to be HDSP PCI card
(as that will go in the computer I will try and get working) but is not to be included in
the above budget.
I know mail-lists are the best places for these types of question but for music specific
stuff the forums are never as good as far as users and information goes.
Regards, Dale
From: dj_kaza(a)hotmail.com
To: arnold(a)arnoldarts.de; linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:54:44 +0000
Subject: Re: [LAU] OT: New i7 rig, Gfx card recomendations and more.
Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2012 22:19:39 +0200
From: arnold(a)arnoldarts.de
To: linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
Subject: Re: [LAU] OT: New i7 rig, Gfx card recomendations and more.
On Wed, 24 Oct 2012 10:46:49 +0000 Kaza Kore <dj_kaza(a)hotmail.com>
wrote:
TL/DR:
Z68 - works with RAID5 on SATA2 ports OK?
RME HDSP card - PCI or PCIe?
Gfx card recommendations??
Or persuade me to go for a cheaper rig as I probably don't really
need all that...
Regards, Dale.
Regarding the raid5:
http://www.miracleas.com/BAARF/
And we (as the business I work for) have dismissed hw-raid in general.
A while back you only got problems if your controller broke and you
didn't have the same again. Nowadays you even get problems when you
update the firmware of the controller (or when your cold-standby
doesn't have the correct fw-version). Just stay away from it.
With something that is going to be quite so mobile I really preferably
do want to be running the OS off a RAIDed drive! Sure I could use a
single drive and regularly ghost it to a backup one at home but this
isn't going to help me if it gets damaged on the way to a party. Well
guess it might if I also take the spare and backup after every event...
RAID seems so much more suited to the job though!
For the Mobo: Use something from a brand known for quality. Asus might
do okayish laptops, their boards are almost as crap as asrock. For an
intel-system, why not use an intel board? The higher price is _small_
when you take the higher quality into account. High-quality boards
last much longer and work better.
Asus known as being shit? I admit I haven't done much researched into
hardware since I built my last desktop I think in 2001 and that definitely
didn't seem to be the consensus then. And it seems weird that we would
chose a known poor component for video ingest servers which are to be on
24/7, although it is already the third revision of the build. So what
would you recommend?
PCI is dead, any graphics card with linux-support is good. Now the
salesman in me takes over: intel is actively supporting the
linux-community also in the graphics field, not like nvidia. Yes, we
are an intel-reseller. We only see other hardware when its broken and
the customers want us to fix it or get the data of from it.
Yeah PCI is definitely on the way out! But dead just yet? Almost every
board I've looked at has at least 1 for legacy reasons. I guess the same
was true for ISA for a while after PCI came out though and those were
gone off 99% of boards many years ago... My thoughts were more trying
to ensure that the support for the PCIe version of the HDSP card was as
supported as the PCI version.
So I will look at an ATI card then :-)
Although I am slightly leaning towards trying to get my old P4 computer
back up and working and see quite how underpowered for what I want to do
it turns out to be. I think the graphics card is the only fully dead component...
Cheers to everybody who has responded.
Dale.
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
4182
days inactive
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days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
10 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
Arnold Krille -
Kaza Kore -
Len Ovens -
Patrick Shirkey -
Paul Coccoli -
Ralf Mardorf