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last edited 1 year ago by drewp

Hardware configuration of my first tester box

This page will describe the hardware that I am using on my first tester box for the Digital Tipping Point film. The first tester box will be an experimental for building software on. If it does well, I will stick with it through the completion of the film. However, I am anticipating a lot of changes to all of the hardware that we will be using throughout this project. As it stands right now, I am using the home-built server described below, with the following Compaq Presario 4403US Desktop as a second box occasionally. The Compaq Presario has the following specs:

Video equipment.

We shot most of the tape on the Sony DSR-PD170 miniDV camera, and we are doing the editing with a Sony DSR-45 DVcam? deck.

Issues with SuSE? 10.0 and the Nvidia video card.

SuSE? 10.0 nitially didn't like the Nvidia video card. After I installed the Nvidia card and turned the machine back on, I got the usual SuSE? 10.0 start up screen. But then, rather than booting all the way through to KDE, SuSE? just gave me a command line. I logged in as root and then did a startx command, but that gave me an error message that I forgot to write down. I rebooted the computer with Damn Small Linux in the CD burner (no CD-ROM available) and it brought up the default DSL desktop just fine. A friend of mine later suggested that I try the SaX2? command at the root prompt, but alas, being a simple end user who is still learning, I had already started a fresh install of SuSE? 10.0, which is just fine, because it was a quick install, and I needed some more programs anyway. Also, I had no data on this box yet, and so I lost nothing by blowing away the hard drive and reinstalling. The reinstall of SuSE? 10 worked just fine. SuSE? 10.0 found the video card no problem. --einfeldt

Memory limit of 384 MB on the Compaq Presario 4403US

A couple of friends of mine have helped me dig into the maximum possible memory for this Compaq Presario 4403US box. This box will truly test the lower limits of speed in working with video editing for this film, as it is not upgradeable beyond 384 MB, which is a combination of a 256 memory stick and a 128 memory stick. Let's see how it performs. We googled pretty thoroughly, and I also tested the box by installing two 256 MB memory sticks. One note: I made a typical newbie mistake in that I tried to put a double-sided 256 stick into the box with a single-sided stick. That didn't work. No damage to the box. It's just that this type of Compaq Presario needs single-sided sticks only, apparently, as the double-sided stick just wouldn't work. At all. Not even by itself. --einfeldt

Second tester box: Former server 1.2 Ghz AMD Athlon dual core processors with SuSE? 10.0 and the same Nvidia video card.

I had been having problems with capturing sound from our mini-DV tapes onto the Compaq box described above, and so I thought that I would test the tools by attempting to capture audio and video onto a different. This section will document that box. Here are the specs for that Machine. Please note that the video card is the same card: