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I got the visuals sufficiently working, but no audio whatsoever....I need to use the optical out...does anyone have any idea to get this working?

Are you talking about HDMI audio or analog?

I bought a couple actual NES controllers converted to USB.  Anyone know if they will work?

Everyone slow down!  I am completely overwhelmed by the responses!  Oh wait.

No feedback at all?  Usually, there is at least one person who completely loathes an idea.  This complete and utter indifference is scary. 

I have moved on to getting VDPAU working since it is pretty essential with the ION.  I followed the wiki about using avenard's patch in mythtv.  The thing is, I can either get the 180 build by using the release repository or I get the 190 build using the testing repository.  I need the 185 build.  The nvidia 180 drivers have poor or no support for the ION and the 190's run like shit on the ION.  I see the 185's are in his testing repository but I obviously need to modify my install command.  Can some help with this?

I have an idea on revamping the whole process of donations and feature requests.  I realize that donations are lacking and that is what is truly holding up many feature requests.  LinuxMCE has a limited number of developers and only seems to be falling further behind when it comes to keeping up with the 'Jones', so to speak, when it comes to other media platforms.  I think we need to apply some capitalism when it comes to the feature and development process.

I know there is a certain idealist view to the world when it comes to open sources projects.  Lets face it, it doesn't always work that way; especially when it comes to smaller projects with big goals.  For example, the whole green movement didn't really start taking off until people could be shown how to save money with green thinking (a little gov regulation doesn't hurt).  Ideally, people would do it because it's the right way to do something but that never works unless you can show how it will benefit the individual, ideally, monetarily.  People are selfish creatures.  Lets use that to our advantage.  Lets use that for the project's advantage. 

People don't want to pay for a feature they will never see the benefit of.  A perfect example is supported orbiter configurations.  I want an iPhone orbiter.  Other people want an Android orbiter.  Will one see the benefit in the other?  Will one want to contribute to the other?  Why not let the community decide with their donations.  Currently, a donation appears to go into one pot; one black black hole, if you will.  Why not let the completion of features be based on how much support a feature request receives.  Instead of one donation link, why not have a donation link for each feature request.  Be as specific as possible with each feature listing.  Have a dev come up with a 'money dollar' amount that will cover dev costs and post that with each feature/link.  Allow people who are interested in that feature to donate specifically to that feature.  Keep a running total and when the dollar amount is reached, start development on said feature.  If a feature request turns out more complicated than previously thought, come back to the community with how far the feature was developed and why more work is needed and why more money is required.  Then, reopen the donation link with the new amount.  This gets people more involved in the development process and feel more connected to the project.

There should be a page on the website where all of these features and donation links are listed.  Develop a process for getting a feature request added to the list with it's own required amount and donation link.

I would appreciate questions and comments.  I do want this project to succeed.  I know there are people out there willing to pay for work and there are starving devs who could use the work.  Lets start implementing some processes and procedures that will achieve our goals.

HDMI Audio does not work.  I have been all over the forums.  By 'the forums' I mean every forum ever (I swear).  Out in the wild there is working HDMI audio on Ubuntu 8.10 but not working on LinuxMCE.  I don't feel like typing out everything that I have tried (geekyhawkes has run into all of this before read his posts.  I ran into all of the exact same problems he has and I got no farther than he did) but I will explain how to upgrade your ALSA drivers.  I think it's better than what I did on my core (even though it worked with my core).

The best way I have found to upgrade ALSA is here:  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6589810

Thanks to tkmedia and merkur2k for providing that link.

One more quick word on HDMI audio...
This guy: http://imadethisdesign.blogspot.com/2009/08/htpc-zotac-n330-boxeexbmc-vdpau-1080p.html
He has my exact hardware.  He got HDMI audio working.  I wanted to use his settings but I was told LinuxMCE over writes the file that you need to modify each and every time it boots.  No dice.  Since, I am lucky enough to have a receiver that accepts optical and coax digital audio I can work around for now (hopefully, I still have to get that to work).

Oh!  One last thing.  Zotac has some Linux drivers for audio and lan on their website.  Could this be useful?  Linux drivers specifically for this board?
http://www.zotac.com/index.php?option=com_docman_2&task=cat_view&gid=189&Itemid=218&lang=en

geekyhawkes, you are my brother by another mother.  I have been struggling for two days to get HDMI audio working and through your posts and posts the length and breath of the webtertubs I have learned alot but I am at the same spot you are.  HDMI audio does not work.  I will be posting more complete info in my thread.

w00t!  My ION MD works!  It was three frustrating days thinking I was majorly screwing something up to find out it wasn't my fault.  I would like to thank:

TSCHAKeeePC
tkmedia
merkur2k

Without their help I probably wouldn't have gotten this far.

I will describe -- as best as I can remember -- the sequence of events that led me to a working ION MD.  This is what I did.  Remember that when reading it.  I ended up not using anything on the ION wiki page.  This way described below worked for me.  Read this post like a fortune cookie.  Instead of 'in bed' at the end of each sentence use something like, "for thezfunk" or "for me".  I find there are a million ways to skin a cat with Linux.  Also, I was using the HDMI port on the ION for this whole procedure

Firstly, make sure your core is up-to-date.  Do your apt-get update and your apt-get upgrade distro.  Boot up your ION and got into the bios.  Head to the southbridge section (which is where they hid the PXE boot option).  Set your gpu buffer to 512mb of your system ram and enable PXE boot.  I think you then have to save and return to the bios to see the network card as a bootable option.  Boot up the ION and if you set the boot options correctly it will boot off the network and LinuxMCE will take over.  You should get all the way to the AVwizard without any problems.  I was on a 61" TV with HDMI and the 1080p option wouldn't display right but the 720p option did.  I went through the AVwizard selecting UI1.  That is very important.  After the AVwizard completed I think I had to reboot.

The ION booted up and it gave the usual messages about loading LinuxMCE and the orbiter will be generated.  I think the orbiter generator ran for 10-15 mins.  There might have been another reboot after the generator ran and then I was in!  UI1 was working and I could get into KDE desktop.  Then some more of the fun began.  I wanted to install the nvidia drivers with a packet manager for dependency reasons.  Luckily the above mentioned guys pointed me in the right direction.  This link:  http://www.ubuntugeek.com/howto-install-nvidia-190-25-beta-drivers-in-ubuntu-jauntyintrepidhardy.html.  I will run through the commands I used.  I installed nano with a sudo apt-get install nano.  I like nano the best out of the text editors that I have used.

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sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Since we are using 0810 we want the Intrepid instructions.
add the following line to the sources.list

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deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/nvidia-vdpau/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/nvidia-vdpau/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
Save and exit file
Install GPG key using the following command

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sudo apt-key adv -- keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com -- recv-keys CEC06767
Update source list

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sudo apt-get update
Now install the drivers.  If you want the newest 185 which I think are final instead of the 190 betas just replace the 190 with 185.

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sudo apt-get install nvidia-190-modaliases nvidia-glx-190
I think I then did a

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sudo nvidia-xconfig
because on reboot I got a black screen with cursor.  You can try rebooting and if you get the black screen use the nvidia-xconfig.  It generates a new xorg.conf file.

Now it was time to rerun the AVwizard.  I rebooted and when the tones started sounding I held down SHIFT.  The screen was black (I think) because the video was being output on something other than the HDMI port.  I sat and hit the numeral keys until I got a picture.  I think it was 5 or 6 but start at 1 and work your way up.  Pause at each one and give it a second to switch.  I went through the AVwizard, set it to 1080p and UI2 with overlay.  After a reboot and orbiter regen I was in the UI at 1080p! 

Some notes:
I originally installed the nvidia 190's.  They seemed to be a little slow.  After I was back in at 1080p with the new drivers I did an update from KDE instead of the command line.  Don't do that.  It screwed up my nvidia drivers and I had to reinstall.  When I reinstalled the nvidia drivers I picked the 185's.  They seemed to run smoother.  I want to try the 190's again but right now it runs fine on the 185's. 

I still need to get the audio working via HDMI.  There seems to be mixed luck with that but I know that I need to install the new ALSA drivers.  Does anyone know of a way to do it with a package manager?

Your problem is very similiar to mine but I just tested my ram and it is fine!  My issue is with the MD.  It's an ION board and I get through the avwizard but then it just gets into a orbiter regen loop.

I can answer your quick question: Yes, the MD's will typically take their drivers from the Core...

I'm not sure about your second question, but I don't think that LinuxMCE was designed to do multi-headed MDs (including the Core/Hybrid).

Oh, and unless I did something wrong...my MD did NOT get it's drivers from the core.  It went out on it's own and tried installing an old 180.xx.xx driver.

Thank you, phenigma.

That is exactly what I needed.  This should probably be added to the wiki.  You have enabled me to get quite a bit farther but now...another roadblock.

After I was able to get root access to the image I loaded it again on the ION.  I installed nano since vim is a pain.  I went to change 'nv' to 'vesa' in the xorg.conf file to find I didn't have a xorg.conf file.  I had a xorg.conf.pluto.avwizard however.  I opened the xorg.conf.pluto.avwizard file, made my changes in nano, and saved it as xorg.conf and presto, on reboot, the config started and I proceeded to follow the rest of the wiki about the ION:  http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/ZOTAC_ION.

I proceeded to try and update the nividia drivers.  They keep failing.  I am doing it just like I did on the core where it worked just fine.  I don't have the failure from the log here right now but I will post back.

I do have another idea to try.  Now that I have run through the AV wizard and I have UI1 working do I need to change the xorg.conf back to 'nv' before updating the nvidia drivers?  Could this be a missing step?

Once this ION is up and working I plan on adding what I did to the wiki so that others can use this most perfect of boards for their MD!

New update and new request for help.

I now have four working 1TB hard drives for my RAID - still not setup

I have instead moved to setting up my new 330 Zotac ION board as my MD in the Living Room (diskless).  It was a pain trying to find the spot in the BIOS to PXE boot it.  It is in the south bridge setting down at the bottom.  It booted and was found by the core but I noticed that when it tried to get some files from the internets it failed.  Found out the WAN NIC on my core had stopped working for no reason.  Long story short, I had to load BIOS defaults on the core for it to start working again.  Not sure what was going on there. 

The second try with a working Core WAN NIC went slightly better.  Wound up at a Failed to Start X error.  No problem, dove into the wiki here:  http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/ZOTAC_ION.  Down at the bottom is says to set your xorg.conf to 'vesa' from 'nv'.  Much easier said than done.

Logging into the MD left me at a prompt as the sambahelper user.  That's where I am stuck.  Every time I try doing anything it says I don't have permissions and every time I try logging in as root...I don't know the password and the one I have on the core doesn't seem to work.  I even managed to get into vim and fumble around enough to change 'nv' to 'vesa' but I couldn't save.  Permissions forbade me.  Some prodding or help is politely asked for from the community.

PS...according to the wiki the default password for sambahelper is nothing or just hit enter.  Says I have the wrong password when I try that.

I can't believe this...I really can't...but is this what he is referring to?

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/18/video-dfi-hybrid-motherboard-runs-two-whole-systems-simultan

I have another question for the community.  I run BOINC on my computers (Distributed Computing).  I plan on installing it on my Core when I get everything all working.  My motherboard has room for more GPU's.  I want to throw an extra 8800GT I have lying around in it so that BOINC can use the GPU for processing.  Anyone know what LinuxMCE does with multiple GPU cards?  Would this possibly screw things up?

Another quick question.  Do the MD's get their drivers from the Core?  If my Core drivers are up-to-date then all MD's will match?

AnandTech did a review of the three current manufacturer options

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3630