How to turn old PC into media center?

[DIZZAY]

i have this old dell optiplex gx110 with lupu installed on it and i want to try to turn it into a media center but i have no clue where to start. it has 256mb of raM (maxes out at 512mb) and a 20gb hdd. im not really concerned with speed, i just want it tto record my tv shows while im in school (maybe 1 or 2 a day until i convert them later),record ps3 gameplay, and i want to be able to watch movies from my spare hdd on my tv. if it helps i dont have a hdtv, just one of those old tube tvs with the yellow and white av inputs and i have a very basic direct tv receiver (black, no kind of dvr features). any help?

[Flash]

I doubt that this thing has enough horsepower to do what you want. I could be wrong. For sure you'll need to max out the RAM.

[mini-jaguar]

Any luck with this?

If Puppy turns out too slow for this, there are also a few minimal distributions made for just multimedia:

MoviX:
http://movix.sourceforge.net/

GeeXboX:
http://www.geexbox.org/

MenuetOS also has some features:
http://www.menuetos.net/
but MenuetOS isn't Linux anymore, nor is it Windows, it's probably the smallest OS with a full GUI, fits on a floppy disk.

Even if you do end up using Puppy you might still want to join their forums as they are more likely to give you advice on the hardware connections you need.

You could also set up some kind of multi-boot system, all these OSes together Puppy included won't take up much room on the hard drive, probably less than half a Giga.

[jason.b.c]

but MenuetOS isn't Linux anymore, .

when was it Ever Linux??????