Use old PC for record only?

[benfanti]

Let me start off by apologzing for starting another system requirement post. However, after doing a search I was wondering if I could still get your opinions on a setup.

I am making a new GBPVR system at my home, but I wanted to use an old PC at work to only record news broadcasts. I would NOT use the old PC to watch live tv, or even watch the recordings, only to record shows to copy and view on the main machine.

The old PC is a
Pentium II 400Mhz
128 MB (can upgrade to 256 easily)
Windows 2000
would add a PVR-150 card.

Any thoughts?

[benfanti]

Thanks for the quick reply.

It actually is for personal use. My son needs to recordd local news broadcasts for school for two weeks for some project. I was just trying to use an old pc at work that was set to be thrown out.

I guess we are getting beyond the useful life of the machine. I just thought perhaps the hardware requirements on the card might apply to the many uses of the card (live tv, watching shows) and that simply recording them might be less taxing on the machine.

In any event, thanks again very much. I can't believe how fast this community responds.

[Jim_]

Yes it should work fine for recording.
Hardware mpeg cards worked just fine back in the 486 days. Only OS/software bloat and playback without hardware decoding has increased the minimum requirements.
I tried a 450c laptop with 160 megs of ram and it recorded just fine.

[landru22]

I record with a PII 350 mhz pc using a PVR250 and it works very well. I am also able to play back using an Xcard and that works fine as well. I don't do live tv or use any other advanced functions.

[erik]

I record using a 800 MHz Via C3 (same as a 400MHz Celeron) using a PV150
I also run Comskip on the system.
And a web server, and a mail server, and a UPnP server, and a FTP server, and.....