[Voyage-linux] Update: Alix 3c2, MPD, and Voyage working fine!

[Nick L.]

My Alix 3c2 arrived over the weekend, and after getting the SSH login issue
resolved with the help from the list (many thanks) I was able to get MPD up
and running. I have it setup to pull FLAC files from NFS via my bedroom
desktop. I had concerns about the Alix handling large FLAC audio files,
i.e., I was worried about skips, pauses, and clicks. I am happy to report
that none of this has occurred in over six hours of play time. Internet
radio stations are working without issues as well. The Alix has replaced an
old Dell GX110 pentium 3 (found in the trash) which although was running MPD
just fine, it was very audible (two high pitched whiny fans) when listening
to classical music. It also drew close to 50 watts at idle from the outlet.
The Alix is dead silent and barely breaks 4 watts when attached to a
Kill-A-Watt meter.

The FLAC files files are sent out via USB (ALSA snd-usb-audio module) which
in turn feeds a Trends Audio UD-10 USB DAC. This unit can be used as a stand
alone DAC, or it can feed a high quality external DAC from it's numerous
digital outputs: AES/EBU, S/PDIF, TOSLINK. Mine is feeding an Adcom GDA-700
HDCD dac via AES/EBU. The UD-10 is based on a PCM 2707 chip which does
double duty as a mid-range DAC and USB to Digital out converter.

I still have to figure out some very minor issues with NFS and directory
permissions though; this being my first time setting up NFS.

Newbie tips for future mailing list archive searches:

1.Untar the voyage tar file as root and not as a regular user, so that SSH
will start properly.

2.Two different 2 gigabyte CF cards  (Kingston and Sandisk ultra II) would
not boot at all when fdisked as one single partition. I made a smaller
partition (512MB) and both would boot into grub normally.

3.MPD expects certain configuration files at boot time. I have edited
/etc/mpd.conf so that all the config files are edited and stored on the NFS
server, i.e., playlists, last state file, pid file, log file, thus
minimizing writes to the compact flash. Since the NFS share gets mounted
before MPD starts, this seems to be working out just fine.

On a side note, does anyone know of any minimalist single board computers,
like the Alix, that have at least one SATA port and a power header for the
drive? Something that cold be used as an ultra low powered file server for a
small home network?? PC Engines has stated they have no plans of offering
anything like that anytime soon.
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