dell gx240 as media server

[greg from winnipeg]

I'd like to build a media server to run squeezecenter, perform backups and to hold music and videos.

Would a Dell gx240 with an additional large hd suffice?

Specs:
Pentium 4 - 1.7GHz
512MB Memory
40GB Hard Drive
ATI AGP Video Card
Onboard Audio with Internal Speaker
Onboard 100Mbps Ethernet NIC
AGP Slot
2 PCI SLOTS
Parallel port, 2 serial ports
4 USB ports - 2 front, 2 rear
CD-ROM Drive
Standard 3.5" Floppy Drive
WINDOWS XP Professional Installed with all current patches including SP3 and IE7
Comes with Windows XP COA (Certificate of Authenticity)

I can get above for $60-70.

Thanks,
Greg

[SuperQ]

That would work if you replaced XP with something light weight like Ubuntu. You would probably want 1GB of ram for XP.

Otherwise seems fine.

[bl243]

Hi Greg,

I use a GX240 with 1 GB RAM to run SqueezeCenter 7.3. Im using Ubuntu. Works fine, if anything I thought it was a little slow serving up the squeezecenter webpages. Using slimfx sorts this out though.

Cheers,
Ben

[greg from winnipeg]

Sounds encouraging, Ben.

I picked up the computer yesterday. Bought it on ebay and then walked two blocks for the local pickup!

I have absolutely no linux experience, so I'm intending to leave it as xp since it runs smoothly. I think the previous owner did a reformat and then clean install of the os.

Two questions:

1. Do you use the WOL function with your GX240 and the squeezebox?

I was told that the computer *does* support WOL, and I would like to use it to conserve power. Does it work?

2. Recommendations for mass storage?

Since it is an sff (small form factor) model, there is no room for a second hd. I was hoping to leave the existing 40gb hd for the OS, squeezecenter and ripping/tagging apps and then to install a second large ide drive for music and video files. I have an old xbox with XBMC to stream videos.

Options:
Try installing a second hd in the floppy bay (Possible?)
Buy an external USB drive.
Replace internal HD and put an OS on it.

I know most on this board would recommend the last option with some version of linux, but I'm not keen to mess with a good, working xp that is registered and gets updates. So, at this point, I'm thinking of buying an external drive. I'm willing, however, to listen and learn from others' experiences.

Thanks for any advice,
Greg

[bl243]

Greg,

Ref the wake on LAN. I haven't used this on my GX240 specifically - but we did make use of it on several Dell machines in the office (range of machines from 240's up to 755's) I don't remember any machines causing a problem.

Regarding the SFF and a second drive. I would just remove the CD drive and floppy drive and velcro a second disk in. However using IDE will limit your capacity - so perhaps an external USB drive might be a good idea.

Cheers,
Ben

[greg from winnipeg]

FYI:

I installed vortexbox in the dell gx240. Effortless to install and working like a charm, the dell is now serving music to my sb3 and boom as well as video to my original xbox.

For those who are entertaining the thought of building a squeezecenter server, I recommend vortexbox.

http://vortexbox.org/about/

[rojah]

FreeBSD works best, but all are super slow on the 240. I have a 2.5GHz processor and 1.5G of memory (133MHz only clocks at 100MHz though). I also have a VERY large library (few Terabytes of combination of Flac, MP3, and WMA files.

It seems it is the database that takes the most resources. I noticed when i setup a separate MySQL database, things ran better.

My setup is sitting idle until i can get a Core2Duo or an AMD 64bit rig with a few (4) Gigs of memory to run it.

Hope that helps, any suggestions from others for a good server setup (preferably using FreeBSD), let me know.

[agillis]

I would also recommend VortexBox ,it's my project I think you will get better performance on that older system. But I can see why you would want to stay with XP. I would recomend running somthing like xplite

http://www.litepc.com/

to strip out as many unnecessary features of XP as you can. This will cut down the memory footprint and speed up the system. The best option is to have one big drive. If you have a SATA controller on the motherboard use that if not buy a cheap SATA controller to connect your large drive. Remove the 40GB drive. It will use up extra power and will be much slower then a modern 1TB drive. You can create a small partition for the OS and a large one for your music. This is very easy to do while your installing XP.

[mherger]

> I would also recommend VortexBox ,it's my project

Hey, this posting is the first of yours to end in my spam filter... Are
you pushing your project a bit too hard? :-)

--

Michael

[agillis]

Probably because I posted a link in my post. I don't normally do that but I really like the xplite project. I have been using their software for years to remove bloat from windows.

I first started using it on windows 98. It can get a Widnows 98 install down to 8mb!! The desktop is lighting fast with absolutely zero waiting for anything.

They were also the first people to show you could completely remove Internet Explorer from windows and it would still work even thought Microsoft said it could not be done.