LinuxMCE Forums
General => Users => Topic started by: Kybber on August 09, 2007, 04:20:04 pm
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After careful consideration I have abondoned my plans to go for a Core 2 system,
and have instead decided to go with an AMD-based LMCE HTPC because of the Nvidia
integrated graphics. I'll be using the Antec Fusion case, so the mainboard needs to
be m-ATX.
My TV is a Toshiba 37C3000PG which has both VGA and 2xHDMI inputs, but at this
point I do not know which provides the better PC input solution since I have only tested
VGA. There is noticeable tearing when I hook up my laptop w/NV-120 to the TV's VGA
input, so I am a bit afraid that will be the case with other VGA-based boards as well.
I am currently considering the following two boards:
1. Abit AN-M2HD (http://www.abit.com.tw/page/no/motherboard/motherboard_detail.php?pMODEL_NAME=AN-M2HD&fMTYPE=Socket%20AM2)
Pros:
Integrated HDMI-output
New chipset: GeForce 7050PV / nForce 630a
Supports PureVideo (http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo.html) (so far only for Windows, so not really a biggie)
Cons:
Newer chipset, so may not be supported
2. Asus M2NPV-VM (http://www.asus.com.tw/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=101&l3=296&l4=0&model=1138&modelmenu=2)
Pros:
Known to work with LMCE (link (http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Video#Equipment_used_in_the_demo))
HDTV out (not digital, but component. Already in use by my DVD player)
Cons:
Chipset is already previous generation: GeForce 6150 / nForce 430
Need to use DVI-HDMI adapter
Does anyone have any insight to share? Specifically: Will the GF 7050 chip work
nicely with LMCE 1.1 using UI2 with alpha-blending just like the GF 6150 apparently
does? Any other problems I may run into with the Abit?
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I have the Asus MN2-E MB, so I give you the ins and outs of it, it shouldn't be too different than the one your thinking of.
Heat pipe = No noisy chipset fan
Only 1 bios chip (no backup) but the chip is removable if you need to replace it.
Do NOT use the Asus live update thing. Crashed my bios with it, not even a replacement chip would fix it, had to RMA the board.
Sata connectors are directly behind the PCI-E Slot. Depending on the legth of your video card and number of drives, you could have issues. I have an X1900XT (big card) and it makes all but 2 of the connectors useless. Luckly I only needed the 2 drives.
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Thanks for your response :)
I have the Asus MN2-E MB, so I give you the ins and outs of it, it shouldn't be too different than the one your thinking of.
Actually it is. Yours is a full ATX, whereas the M2NPV-VM is uATX. That probably also
means I'll have at least as much trouble as you with things getting in each other's way...
I've done quite a bit of digging today, and have found that it should be pretty straight-
forward to install Kubuntu Feisty 7.04 on the Abit AN-M2HD (link (http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?p=10398)). A slight bit of tinkering
is needed, but as long as LMCE doesn't mind, it looks like it may work.
A couple of questions to ease my mind:
1. According to some fellow gentooist (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-4145165.html#4145165), the latest nvidia driver enables 3D acceleration
and allows beryl to show off. Is it safe to assume this means that UI2 with alpha
blending will work?
2. Will a manual installation of the nvidia driver cause any problems with the LMCE
installation or its automated upgrades?
I'll be ordering the board tomorrow unless someone warns me about potential
obstacles ;). Will of course add the board to the wiki hardware-pages once/if I
get everything working right.
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Looks like a pretty nice board that abit one, just to be sure you might want to look around to see if anyone had problems with MythTV and that chipset, NVidia appears to be one of the better supported chipsets so you should be safe there (but don't take my word for it).
I have installed the latest NVidia drivers myself (diskless MD on a previous setup) that wasn't much of a problem, whether it will cause problems with the updates I don't know. I dont expect it, but in the worst case I reckon one could always reinstall the drivers from the NVidia site over the updates again.
I'm looking forward to seeing another motherboard added to the wiki (I need a better one too as I'm stuck with this ASUS M2A-VM HDMI), so good luck!
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Thank you :)
The 7050PV seems to work fine with MythTV:
http://www.nabble.com/-slightly-OT--HDTV-cpu-t4066129s15552.html
My order was just confirmed, so early next week I am expecting the following:
ABIT AN-M2HD, GF7050PV, Socket AM2
AMD ATHLON 64 X2 5200+ 2.6GHZ (Brisbane, 65W)
Crucial DDR2 BallistiX PC6400, 2GB
Samsung HD161HJ 160GB S166 3.5" 7200RPM
Samsung HD501LJ 500GB T166 3.5" 7200RPM
NEC ND-7173A DVD±RW 18x DL Black
Nexus Real Silent D12SL-12 BW, 2 pcs.
Somewhat overkill, I know. But future-proof, and I am quite happy with the price :)
Unfortunately the Antec Fusion doesn't arrive until the end of the month, so I
guess I'll just use an old Chieftec I have laying around for the next couple of
weeks. Also, our new kitchen floor will be arriving Monday or Tuesday, so I'll
have to work on that for a couple of evenings :(
The observant reader may notice the setup is missing a proper heatsink. The
very best sink for this cabinet is the Scythe Mini Ninja which isn't for sale in my
country yet. I'll be using the stock fan until then.
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Let us know how you go with this config!
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Yes, definetely update us on what you use for the server/backend/core and the client/frontend/media director.
I've been burned a few times trying to get the right combination going and gave up in the end, as a real working system as opposed to a test system.
The ASUS M2NPV-VM is a year old and the 6200 chipset has been replaced by the 7xxx and now 8xxx chipsets.
As fiire has just come out, I'm looking at that. I have emailed them and polywell. Does anyone know how many slots are in the server as I have 2 asterisk cards, 3 PVR cards and a 8-channel frame grabber
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what is a PIV card and an 8 channel frame grabber? do you know that they work with linux or linuxmce yet? i was looking for a security camera card which is what i thought the 8 channel frame grabber was, so i was hoping you knew of one that would work. and curious what a PIV was. I also wanted to get an asterisk PBX going with 3 analog phones...but was told analog phones were a pain to get working with it...can you enlighten me a little on these?
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Yes, I'm been having some medical issues recently and I don't seem to be checking stuff that I type and I also seem to get items mixed up. Sometimes speech as well.
I've corrected the post.
I meant PVR. I have hauggepauge PVR-150 and PVR-350
I use zoneminder, occasionally (the machine get's robbed for trying other stuff like plutohome, linuxmce, sugarcrm etc.).
http://www.zoneminder.com
Buy a TDM400 card from digium or a dealer. It can have up to 4-modules e.g. 1 CO (Central Office) and 3 single line phones. That's how I started with asterisk 3-years ago. I had some issues with setting up zaptel, but it's better now, as it always is with time and peoples dedication. If zaptel finds and autoconfigures the card then it will be a breeze.
If you have no experience with VOIP/asterisk, then try asterisk@home / trixbox
http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net/
Oh, I later bought some aastra 9133i SIP phones. They work great.
Full iso install of linux with call manager, call accounting, web GUI setup of extensions and routes. Saves you having to configure by hand ie. you'll save several days, unless you already know apache, mysql etc.http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net
I have a lot of pieces, zaptel cards, cameras, framegrabber, PVR's, x-10, insteon, caddx nx8e, IR stuff and want to tie it all together.
I talked to some of the plutohome people in the August - December timeframe last year as they have been talking about dealer systems for over 3-years on their web site, but I could never get a dealer name from them to buy the hardware, so, like many people, I keep testing when I can.
I've emailed fiire and polywell about the system for number of slots plus if linuxmce is specifically tuned for the hardware.
I'll let you know if I hear back
PS - this is an interesting read http://www.linuxis.us/linux/media/howto/linux-htpc/buying.html
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Well it's been a nine days and I've emailed both fiire and polywell twice, but still no reply.
It's pretty sad that both companies can't even be bothered to respond to a simple question of how many PCI slots in fiire station
I even copied to my yahoo address so a reply-all would go to both addresses in case there was a spam filter issue.
Anyone else had any response from sales@polywell.com or info@fiire.com
Maybe the fiire is dead already.
Anyone else know the number of PCI slots in fiire station ?
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Maybe this helps: Fiire Station specs anyone looked inside (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=2063.0), no direct answer to your question though.
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and here we are, 12-days later and still no response from sales@polywell.com or info@fiire.com
Does anyone have any fiire stuff yet ?
I would like to know how many pci slots in the server
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Kybber
Haven't seen any updates on your progress ... can you update us? I am really keen to get a motherboard that has HDMI output (not just DVI), but got warned off that Asus you mentioned for various compatibility reasons. I had resigned myself to the other main Asus (DVI) recommended, but would really like to know how you went with the Abit....
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Hi !
I'm interested in the ABIT AN-M2HD board too.
Has anyone tested it in 1080p, since I think the nvidia 7050 chip only deals up to 1080i hardware playback.
What about encoding, what can be done by the GPU (720p/1080i/1080p/H264...)?
Thanks
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Does anyone have any fiire stuff yet ?
I ordered some stuff from then on the 25th and the last update on the order is on the 27th, which says it was assigned to someone... I know I'm being impatient as some of this stuff takes time, but this is the first time I had someone charge my card (was almost immediate) prior to it being ready to ship.
Having said that, I did ask them a question before my order and they did respond... It just took a couple weeks...
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I have just installed an asus m2n-deluxe and works perfect out of the box. It hasn't got a video out at all (but I have a good card that I intended to use anyway) but it has got 7 SATA ports! (lots of room for fast hard drives!) 3 pci, 2 pci express, 7.1 HD sound with sp/dif and coax out.
Nice board!
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I am really sorry that I haven't updated this thread with my progress.
But here is is:
The Abit AN-M2HD works quite well with LMCE. Both HDMI and VGA worked
fine. There are two things to note:
1. The nvidia-driver included with LMCE0704 is not compatible with
the on-board GPU. That can easily be fixed by following these instructions:
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?p=10398
Edit: If you install the drivers before installing LMCE over Kubuntu, you
will have to install them again on first boot. Seems like LMCE overwrites
the drivers on installation.
2. Menus will flicker when using UI2 with transparency. This seems to
be a problem with the driver for the 7050 chip:
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=1897.0
UI2 w/o transparency works fine, however.
Unfortunately I have to admit that I came across Media Portal which
suits my needs better than LMCE. My wife and I like to watch TV
shows, and Media Portal has a very nice plugin for that. So I'm sad
to say that I've stopped using LMCE altogheter, but have saved room
on the hard drive just in case I want to try it out again at a later time.
As a sidenote: I've been using the VGA output instead of HDMI. When
using the HDMI cable, Windows will disconnect the TV whenever I turn
the TV off. When I turn it on again, the hardware is redetected, but
the picture will sometimes be shifted a bit to the right. I have to jump
through some hoops to get it back to normal again. This is not an issue
when using the VGA cable. I doubt this would be a problem in Linux, and
I hope there's a way to disable this feature in Windows as well. But in
the meantime the VGA cable does the job wonderfully, and I am very
happy with the setup :)
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I'm having a beast of a time with the little brother of the board you chose (AN-M2). I've got the video driver up and rolling, but still don't have UI2 yet. Here's how I did it:
Install from Quick Install Disc.
You'll get the router prompt, so be ready for it. Go ahead and log in (u: linuxmce p: linuxmce).
sudo -s
wget NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.11-pkg1.run
sh NVIDIA*.run
Follow the prompts, saying no to the 'search for blah blah module' and yes to 'I'm gonna have to build it from scratch, is that ok?'
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
Follow the prompts, most of them can be OK'd through. Make sure your monitor resolution is right (or one notch below). Once done...
nvidia-xconfig
That'll give it the nvidia touch, then...
cd /etc/X11
vi xorg.conf
Go to the last line under 'Devices', press 'Shift' and 'r' and add...
Option "NoLogo" "true" --> More of a personal taste, this one's optional.
Option "UseEDIDDpi" "false"
Edit the monitor resolution, if you need to at this time. I had to in order to drop down from 1280x768 to 1280x720 for my panel.
Press 'Esc' to stop your edit and hold down 'Shift' and type 'zz' to save.
startx
KDE should start up.
If everything's working, great. At this point, I went and downloaded Envy to make sure it got installed.
Activate AVWizard upon reboot from Linux MCE Launch Manager (it's under the Video tab, once everything finishes what it's doing).
You may need to click like crazy to close out the other things that are going on (main setup wizard will try to start, etc.).
Select UI2 without transparency (supposedly, this has some nasty flickering if you select the alpha blending).
Once done, reboot and select recovery mode from grub's menu at startup (hit the esc key on boot when you see the prompt)
Same process, login, repeat edits to xorg.conf, etc.
That should work. I've got half the process working now, but don't have UI2 yet (saw another suggestion to start with UI1, and now I can't get it to switch to UI2 for the life of me).
Honestly, at this point, for your sanity - go with the 6xxx series chipset boards. You may lose a couple of sata slots, but that can be remedied with a card and the time you'll save will be worth it. Plus, you can use UI2 with alpha blending, which, would I have known that this board isn't capable of it yet, I would have skipped it in the first place.
Oh well, good thing I bought a 6xxx series board as a backup. Hopefully when it's better integrated into LMCE I can put it back in.
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Does anyone have any fiire stuff yet ?
I ordered some stuff from then on the 25th and the last update on the order is on the 27th, which says it was assigned to someone... I know I'm being impatient as some of this stuff takes time, but this is the first time I had someone charge my card (was almost immediate) prior to it being ready to ship.
Having said that, I did ask them a question before my order and they did respond... It just took a couple weeks...
Hello again.
It's been about 4-weeks.
Any news on your fiire purchase yet ?
Regards...Martin