[Libdlo] Host side requirement

[Phil Endecott]

KaruppuSwamy T wrote:
> I am planning to build a Cheap Home NAS Server with external USB drive. The
> additional feature I am planning is to use it as Digital Photo Frame, for
> which I have a Lilliput UM-70 DisplayLink based Monitor. I am considering
> NSLU2 Storage Link as hardware for this purpose and planning to replace
> built-in firmware with Debian as per
> http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Info/CPUOverview. The specification of
> hardware is:
>
> CPU 266 MHz ARM Intel XScale IXP420
> Memory 32MB SDRAM, 8MB Flash
> Connectivity 2 x USB 2.0 Ports, 1 x 100Mbps Ethernet Port
>
> I am not sure about the host side minimum requirement for the displaylink
> monitor. If the above configuration is fine enough to drive external
> DisplayLink monitor I may proceed. Can some one suggest me on this?

Hi,

I have used NSLU2s for a few years for various purposes, mainly running 
Debian.  You could certainly drive a displaylink screen from one, but 
you should expect the update rate to be fairly modest.  If you simply 
want to present a series of photos then that will work, but if you want 
transition effects (e.g. fades or slides) you will have problems.

I have a more powerful ARM NAS box, a QNAP TS-119 (see e.g. 
http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/qnap/ts-119/).  This has a 
similar architecture to the NSLU2 but with a 1.2 GHz processor and 512 
MB of RAM.  The extra RAM in particular makes a huge difference; there 
are lots of things that ought to work on the NSLU2 but fail because 
something (e.g. apt-get) runs out of memory.  I posted about using this 
with a DisplayLink monitor here:  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.freedesktop.libdlo/332

There are also the "SheevaPlug" devices which are closer in price to 
the NSLU2 but have more RAM.

Good luck.


Regards,  Phil.