Geode based system

Rob Withey · 08-20-2005, 05:09 PM

Has anyone had any luck with a Geode based system? I just fried my setup with a bad flash, so I'm looking to make something even smaller and lower power (P233MMX was way too much power for playing MP3s). I'm planning on running DOS again of course.

Rob

tom61 · 08-20-2005, 07:09 PM

It'd be slower, but use less power.

Curious, why DOS of all the OSes to run? Are you intending to play old school DOS games on it(in which case avoid Geode)? If not, it'd be cheaper and easier to just get a dedicated player, and you'd get much better playback quality (unless DOS MP3 players have improved since I last tried them).

Rob Withey · 08-20-2005, 07:37 PM

Thanks for the info. If a 300MHz geode will be massively slower than a 233MHz Pentium, I might have to rethink this (although I played mp3s with only about 20% cpu usage on the pentium).

DOS works for me because I can just turn off the power without worrying about the hard drive, and it's fast to boot up. I don't need much in the way of fancy features. It also means I can run my current software on it.

I've not had any problems at all with the playback quality of my last DOS based system over the last 6 years. I get perfectly good 44kHz 16 bit stereo.

The low power thing is definately an advantage for me - I have an ISR based power supply just waiting to donate parts. I figure I can get the whole setup into a box 6"x4"x2" (half the size of the setup I just fried).

An off the shelf setup is not a good plan for me for several reasons:

I have more music than will fit on 1 CD for a MP3 headunit.
An ipod would be too small and fiddly.
Wheres the fun in not making a carpc.

Rob

starfox · 08-20-2005, 11:04 PM

I've played around with Geodes a bit. I was running a debian based linux system on a Geode in my car for a while: Floating point performance is quite bad on the GX-1. mpg123 worked best with 486 optimisations, and it couldn't play 320kbit mp3s without skipping once in a while (lower bitrates were fine). mpg321 wouldn't play anything at all.

Ogg vorbis would play if i recompiled the standard library it with 486 optimisations. The tremor library works a little better though.

The onboard sound on the biscuit PC that i was using was noticibly crappy (however i was using it in SB16 emulation mode so that might not have helped).

jbors · 08-20-2005, 11:32 PM

You can use VIA-M5000 board. It is very cheap and low power. It plays all formats just fine, but video is a trick. You can manage LinuxBIOS working on it so it will boot in 3-4 secs...

Rob Withey · 08-21-2005, 03:00 AM

Thanks for all the useful info. I guess Geode isn't going to be up to the job. I'm considering a 1GHz Via C3-LP board now : http://www.advantech.com/products/Mo...QMOQ&BU=&PD=EC

Seems to fall within my power supply budget (just), and is fairly compact. Since datasheets for the audio seem a bit difficult to get hold of I think may upgrade to Windows and build myself a small shutdown controller.

Rob