Mailing List Archive: Myth/DVD/MAME on an Ultra5?

Myth/DVD/MAME on an Ultra5?

Oct 3, 2006, 6:32 PM

Post #1 of 4 (2365 views)

This may be a dumb question, but I can't find anything useful via
Google. I'm running Gentoo on my Ultra5, and am starting to wonder if
maybe I can't turn it into a Myth/DVD/MAME machine (since god knows I
don't do anything else useful with it).

Obvious problems:

Onboard video sucks - thinking maybe an ATI 7500 AIW PCI here?

IDE controller is worse - stream everything over the network, or
install a decent IDE controller in one of the PCI slots and connect
the DVD drive to it.

I've already thrown in a DVD drive, new hard drive and a USB
controller card, just in an effort to make the machine slightly
non-useless.

Is this completely impossible? Any suggestions/pointers? I'd rather
find out now than after I spend the money on a video card I can't
actually use.

Thanks,
Jack
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Re: Myth/DVD/MAME on an Ultra5? [ In reply to ]

o.m.a.wilson at sms

Oct 4, 2006, 9:55 AM

Post #2 of 4 (2305 views)

Permalink

On 21:32 Tue 03 Oct , Jack Lloyd wrote:
>
> This may be a dumb question, but I can't find anything useful via
> Google. I'm running Gentoo on my Ultra5, and am starting to wonder if
> maybe I can't turn it into a Myth/DVD/MAME machine (since god knows I
> don't do anything else useful with it).
>
> Obvious problems:
>
> Onboard video sucks - thinking maybe an ATI 7500 AIW PCI here?
>
> IDE controller is worse - stream everything over the network, or
> install a decent IDE controller in one of the PCI slots and connect
> the DVD drive to it.
>
> I've already thrown in a DVD drive, new hard drive and a USB
> controller card, just in an effort to make the machine slightly
> non-useless.
>
> Is this completely impossible? Any suggestions/pointers? I'd rather
> find out now than after I spend the money on a video card I can't
> actually use.
>
> Thanks,
> Jack
> --
> gentoo-sparc@gentoo.org mailing list

Jack,
What is the clock speed on the cpu? I have never tried DVD/TV on my
333Mhz Ultra5 but DivX playback was awful, it can just almost cope with
full screen mpeg playback. I think these machines just aren't powerful
enough to cope with modern media apps.
By the way, is it the IDE controller that sucks? I always put the crap
hard drive performance down the fact they are 5400rpm disk.
Regards,
Oliver Wilson

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Re: Myth/DVD/MAME on an Ultra5? [ In reply to ]

lloyd at randombit

Oct 9, 2006, 12:50 PM

Post #3 of 4 (2315 views)

Permalink

On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 04:55:52PM +0000, Oliver M A Wilson wrote:
> What is the clock speed on the cpu? I have never tried DVD/TV on my
> 333Mhz Ultra5 but DivX playback was awful, it can just almost cope with
> full screen mpeg playback. I think these machines just aren't powerful
> enough to cope with modern media apps.

333 here as well. Was that with the onboard video? I'm wondering if with
a more modern card it can offload more work from the CPU (also I think MPEG-4
is more CPU intensive than MPEG-2, though I'm sure even that will be a strain
for this old thing).

> By the way, is it the IDE controller that sucks? I always put the crap
> hard drive performance down the fact they are 5400rpm disk.

Yeah, the driver has a comment describing the chipset as "broken by
design". No DMA! I've got a 7200 RPM ATA/66 drive in there now and
it's only marginally better. Guess Sun didn't want to canabalize sales
of the Ultra2 by giving the 5 decent I/O throughput.

-Jack
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Re: Myth/DVD/MAME on an Ultra5? [ In reply to ]

o.m.a.wilson at sms

Oct 11, 2006, 9:37 AM

Post #4 of 4 (2313 views)

Permalink

On 15:50 Mon 09 Oct , Jack Lloyd wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 04:55:52PM +0000, Oliver M A Wilson wrote:
> > What is the clock speed on the cpu? I have never tried DVD/TV on my
> > 333Mhz Ultra5 but DivX playback was awful, it can just almost cope with
> > full screen mpeg playback. I think these machines just aren't powerful
> > enough to cope with modern media apps.
>
> 333 here as well. Was that with the onboard video? I'm wondering if with
> a more modern card it can offload more work from the CPU (also I think MPEG-4
> is more CPU intensive than MPEG-2, though I'm sure even that will be a strain
> for this old thing).
>
> > By the way, is it the IDE controller that sucks? I always put the crap
> > hard drive performance down the fact they are 5400rpm disk.
>
> Yeah, the driver has a comment describing the chipset as "broken by
> design". No DMA! I've got a 7200 RPM ATA/66 drive in there now and
> it's only marginally better. Guess Sun didn't want to canabalize sales
> of the Ultra2 by giving the 5 decent I/O throughput.
>
> -Jack
> --
> gentoo-sparc@gentoo.org mailing list

Jack,
That was with the onboard video (less than brilliant). I don't think
much video decompression would be done on the graphics card. An upgrade
(more video ram) would mean that you could run it at higher resolutions
with higher colour depths and refresh rates though. Another thing I never
figured out (didn't spend much time trying to admitedly) was the sound
output at the back? If you go ahead with this and it works do let me know
as I have got 2 of these things and I am struggling to find a use for them.
Regards,
Oliver Wilson

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