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

[Kim-man 'Punky' TSE]

Hi Nick,

Soekris net5501 has SATA connector.  Another choices would be Mini-ITX 
board from VIA or Intel D201GLY2.

Regards,
Punky


Nick L. wrote:
> 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.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Voyage-linux mailing list
> Voyage-linux at list.voyage.hk
> http://list.voyage.hk/mailman/listinfo/voyage-linux
>   


-- 
Regards,
Punky

Voyage Solutions (http://solution.voyage.hk)
* Embedded Solutions and Systems
  - Mesh Networking, Captive Portal, IP Surveillance, VoIP/PBX
  - Network Engineering, Development Platform and Consultation