Has Anyone Heard of.... Utobia MPEG-2 Card

[foneguy9]

I have an older P4 system that I have gone through the LMCE 0704 startup and am able to get the screen to come up with the menu overlay.

However, I haven't been able to put out any video out of the S-Video on the card.  Does anyone have any experience with this Card? 

Also, I am not seeing the Flikr pics on the Monitor that is connected directly to the LMCE.  Do I really need both NIC's connected, one to the LAN and the other to the internet?  Or can I have only the LAN connected until I complete testing this server and make it the DHCP server and take out my router?  Would this be why the Flikr isn't working?

Oh, I have an AGP eVGA 4000 64 M card for video and there is an external connector from the video card to the Utobia Card....
P4 2Ghz
1 G Ram
40 G HDD for OS
160 G HDD for other stuff
(all IDE  )




I'm testing this out in baby steps so any other suggestions would be appreciated!!!

[foneguy9]

Oh, and now that I have audio CD working on it, How do I stop, FF or Backup on the Keyboard?

I haven't decided exactly the IR or remote I will be using....


Baby steps....

[foneguy9]

Found it, F8 brings up additional menu and using the Arrow LFT RIGHT UP DOWN looks like it works...

[foneguy9]

I also seem to have found that I can't use the UI2 

With the eVGA MX4000 AGP card that is currently in the server...

Is there a AGP card that will work with UI2 or would I have to upgrade (MOBO) to a PCIe?

[1audio]

You should be able to get an nVidia 5000 or 6000 agp pretty cheap. Either will support UI2.

[Hagen]

GeForce 6xxxx cards can still be found with AGP.
I just ordered a 6200 for about 30£

However, if you have to do alot you can get a cheaper sollution by getting new components like MB and processor that will be miles ahead and get a PCI-E GeForce 7xxx for 20£.
So far I have put roughly 120-150£ into upgrading the PIV 1.7 to 1GB of RAM, the Nvidia, Gigabit network (not active anywhere else yet though...), a DVD drive and the computer itself at a yard sale for about 30£.

I did check prices for a new core that would be a lot better and ended up with about 320£ (no TV card yet on either), so it's a choice you make about where to put the budget into best use.

Your system does sound a lot like my own 

[foneguy9]

1Audio,

Thanks for the suggestion.  One of my company's client is EVGA, so I will ask them for a dirt cheap discount on any AGP's they may have lying around!!!!
Like an e-GeForce 6200 256MB/64bit perhaps?  AGP x8.  For about $80.00 US retail...  I'll see if I could get it at half that.

I am using this as a Core / Media Director just to test it out but I have done the Network Thin Client to my Laptop HP DV1000 and it 'seems' to work that is boot up to the Media Director, but it took almost 30 minutes to come up!!!!  I will be trying to watch some DVD's on the laptop first then S-Video out to a TV and see what happens.  I may just use an old Sony VAIO mx500(?) I have as a thin client in the family room once I finish testing with my laptop.  I recall it also has an S-Video out.

hey Hagen,

Altho' I don't know the conversion of the currency, as long as it isn't too HIGH I suppose it's good and I'll take your word for it   But I wanted to say that the hardware your describing is sweet! 

I was curious though.  Does the Gig Network make a difference with the other devices at 100 M?  I have wired most of my house myself (crawling in the attic and the basement, yuck!) and have installed Cat 5E jacks and patch cords everywhere.  I haven't upgraded the Network switch to more that the daisy chain of (2) 10/100 Layer 2 switches and for data and gaming (online) seems fine.

May need to look into it once LMCE is FULLY OPERATIONAL AND I KNOW THE FULL POWER OF THIS DEATH STAR!!!!

[foneguy9]

Oh, and by the way, has anyone heard of drivers for the Utobia MPEG-2 Card which I have connected but don't know how to check if LMCE has installed a driver to it?

 

[Hagen]

Thanks for the suggestion.  One of my company's client is EVGA, so I will ask them for a dirt cheap discount on any AGP's they may have lying around!!!!
Like an e-GeForce 6200 256MB/64bit perhaps?  AGP x8.  For about $80.00 US retail...  I'll see if I could get it at half that.

I have on order an Xfx GF6200 256MB AGP8X the conversion is about 74$

[foneguy9]

Well Here is the scoop for the Networked Media Director...

I have basically put a hold on upgrading the Hybrid since it is working now and I'm able to see the video or audio saved locally or to the FreeNAS box that I also setup for this.

But the MD test with my laptop ends with an error.

At the bottom of the screen shows:

Connect: connect timed out

Further up the screen I have things like:

Begin running /scripts/nfs-premount

NFS over TCP not available 192.168.80.1

One thing that it seems like the MD Diskless settings are geared to the 192.168.80.1 IP address and I made the Gateway/Hybrid address as 192.168.80.254.  Is there a way to modify the MD Diskless setup manually so that the IP address it's looking for is not the 80.1?

Has anyone had an issue like this?

 

[1audio]

Why did you make the hybrid 80.254? Is there a reason not to use 80.1? Make sure that the core's address isn't in the range available for anything else.

The settings are mostly available in the advanced - network page. Yo can assign an IP for a diskless boot in the media director page. Make sure the mac address matches the unit you want to change.

The networking is the messy part of LMCE. And when you veer away from the standard default setup it really can get difficult to sort out.

[Hagen]

I would think if you look in the network setup you will find the the internal/virtual NIC is the 80.1 one.
What do you get if you type 192.168.80.1 into the address bar of a browser (on a machine on the network)?

[Zaerc]

I think the LMCE DHCP even hands out ...254 first.  So I reckon that is not a very wise thing to do unless you change the other settings as well.  And aparently the ...1 ip# is hardcoded but you should be able to change that too (somewhere).

Best to just put it back as there is a chance that you'll run into all sorts of other issues as well.

[foneguy9]

Thanks for the reply you'all!!

The numbering convention is what I always use in my networks so that I don't have to remember every network I setup 
But, I am willing to try to make it work and document it and if it doesn't work I'll wipe and start with the default IP settings.

This is what I type in from a Vista machine's Firefox browser:

http://192.168.80.254/pluto-admin/index.php?section=login

And I'm in the log in Page.

As to the DHCP server Range, I put in the ..80.100 ~ ..80.199 so I can have room 'up top' to assign static IP addresses for other servers/devices that may not be available to the Hybrid.

I also have a range assigned for 'non Pluto' devices on the DHCP from ..80.20 ~..80.99.

Internal NIC Eth1 is set to 192.168.80.254

And the External NIC is Eth0 and it is 10.0.11.250 which is a static IP address from my Linksys router which still has the external DSL modem attached to it.  Double NAT basically.
Internet is working and all from the Hybrid in this setup.

Thanks for any other insights!!!!

Still can't get the Bootless MD to come up comepletely.  I will try to wipe the MD in the Hybrid and have it try to set it up again.

[Zaerc]

You chose the path of most resistance, awesome!   Please keep us posted on your progress.

There might be a few more network settings you'd want to look at, search this forum for eth0:0 to find the thread discussing them.

Other settings you might need to change are stored in files under /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/, I think that's where you'll also might find the 192.168.80.1 hardcoded.  And maybe the initial-ramdisk has to be regenerated too, I don't really know about that one.