Broke down...

I finally broke down and ordered the missing pieces that I'd need to build my DVR machine. I originally started by using a stripped down NetX Embedded board, but was quickly frustrated with the fact that it used an odd case design making my PCI Riser card unusable.

So, with a lightening of my wallet, I purchased the following (from itxdepot.com)

1. EPIA ME 6000G (170mm x 170mm size, 2x ATA133 connectors, onboard MPEG2 playback accelerator, S-Video, LVDS, 1x PCI, 1x Serial, 600MHz C7, 1GB memory, fanless)
   
2. 2699R black case
3. Slimline DVDRW
4. 160GB HDD (2.5")
5. assorted lengths of wire

TOTAL COST (including 2-day shipping): $450

Why did I choose these things?
The 6000G is not a powerhouse for computing. However, I don't need anything super duper since it'll just be controlling the Hauppage PVR-250 card. I'm gonna front-end with MythTV (probably just use the KnoppMyth distribution since I'm too busy to spin my own custom linux build). The nice thing about having hardware encoder/decoder for MPEG2 is that my CPU could have all the processing power of a wet turd, and it wouldn't matter. I'm hoping to someday get a wifi connection to the box, but we'll save those hopes and dreams for later.

My plans for this are semi-big. It'll be my set top box. It'll control everything. Sound, video, pictures, and all manner of other things. I'll hopefully have a full media box in a week or two.

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As a link to the past, I've gone back to try and get the awesome code I wrote below for stack tracing working on an alpha.

What I found was the axp platform does not keep a reference to the previous frame pointer on the stack all nice and neat. Therefore, we have to do some wonky hacking. We basically traverse the stack, one byte at a time mind you, dereferencing it until we locate what _could_ be a frame (by either an lda or subq instruction). Not exactly a good time.

But, at least, still possible to do entirely in C, albeit...this time you'll have to know the assembly.