Reuse XP media center PC

[mtnbikeaz]

Hi,

I have the following http://www.cappuccinopc.com/mochap4.asp platform that I used with XP Media Center.

I am new to LinuxMCE and went through an install of 8.10 on this PC.  It is a 2GHz P4 w/ 1GB mem.  I cannot add much to this PC (as in an NVidia Card).  Can it still be used as a Hybrid?  As only Core? or as a Media Director?

My install went with booting into Kubuntu where I had the LinuxMCE script.  I ran the script which did not prompt me for what type of install I wanted and when complete and rebooted, did not run X11.  Does the install look at the HW and select the type of install? 

Thanks for any guidance.

[joerod]

I would say it looks like an interesting core... when you install lmce it should eventually show the avwizard; here you'll configure it to use the most basic user interface (UI) and it should boot.... I don't know if its gonna work as a good media director because of the video card and it should have a relatively big hard drive for core (although you could you a NAS).  But it should boot take a look at this to make sure you configure the avwizard:

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/AV_Wizard_Step_by_Step

[mtnbikeaz]

Thanks for the feedback.  I think I'll look at my other options now.  The fact that I can't upgrade the video on this platform makes it a bit of an unwanted orphan at my home.

[purps]

I notice it has two ethernet ports, which is good from the POV of the core. However, it may lack grunt if you want lots of MDs with only 1 gig of RAM.

From the POV of using it as an MD, might be just the job, but don't be surprised if it will only run UI1. Also need to make sure it is capable of PXE boot (there should be an option for enabling/disabling this in your BIOS, if the hardware does not support it however, you can burn a "PXE CD" or "PXE floppy" to do the job, http://www.rom-o-matic.net/).

I also noticed that the spec mentions AGP, can you not upgrade it with an old AGP nVidia card then?