No TV Capture, no onboard sound, no network boot, slow.

[StrangeWill]

First my specs:

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Chip: AMD Athlon XP 2500+
Motherboard: A7N8X-E
TV Capture Card: Pinnacle (Unknown model?)
1.5GB of RAM
80GB HD
PCI ATI Video card (Unknown model)

First, installation went ok, however after installation I got notices that OpenGL couldn't start, however the first time the error was above the screen so I couldn't read it, after a fresh install this was fixed and I ended up going with the old style layout (card couldn't handle it, thats fine).

First step: No sound, eek! Appears onboard sound of the A7N8X-E doesn't work, however it seems people here have used that board before but haven't reported a problem, thats ok, I got an older soundblaster, oops, it's full of static (but I have audio now!), looks like I need a new audio card. Only gets static once Linux boots... hmm.

Next step: TV Capture card... well sure isn't auto-detected like the video said, actually even if I go into the settings and manually let it pick it up, LinuxMCE still doesn't think it exists (even though it picks up a Pinnacle TV Capture card). Pick up a better video card? Sure... if I find out LinuxMCE is still worth it.

Network booting, the main reason I want this MCE, the ability to distribute video to any computer in the house, I had to disable DHCP on the media center because it was interfering with the DHCP of the main router, however when a network machine tries to network boot, it hangs at getting a DHCP address and finding a bootable device, why would that be? I even turned off the firewall and still got nothing, also tried adding the machine manually as a Media Director, but no go.


At least it plays DVDs, however it seems to randomly jump to and from the remote control interface, sometimes I'm waiting around for a good 15 seconds to let the interface go away and get back to my media.

Also, I picked up the DVDs probably 3-4 months ago, do I need the "new" one? I couldn't find a release date for them, so I can't tell if they're newer than what I got.


Also, everything seems to take slower than it should, especially considering how many times it re-creates overlays and such, seems kind of unreasonable for a device when I want to get to my media. Does it really need to re-create overlays every bootup? Or once I'm done screwing with it I wont re-create overlays again?

[Zaerc]

Network booting, the main reason I want this MCE, the ability to distribute video to any computer in the house, I had to disable DHCP on the media center because it was interfering with the DHCP of the main router, however when a network machine tries to network boot, it hangs at getting a DHCP address and finding a bootable device, why would that be? I even turned off the firewall and still got nothing, also tried adding the machine manually as a Media Director, but no go.

So you've turned off the DHCP server, and now you're wondering why PXE booting doesn't work... 

[StrangeWill]

Network booting, the main reason I want this MCE, the ability to distribute video to any computer in the house, I had to disable DHCP on the media center because it was interfering with the DHCP of the main router, however when a network machine tries to network boot, it hangs at getting a DHCP address and finding a bootable device, why would that be? I even turned off the firewall and still got nothing, also tried adding the machine manually as a Media Director, but no go.

So you've turned off the DHCP server, and now you're wondering why PXE booting doesn't work... 

So PXE booting requires the DHCP server to ALSO be the network boot server? Because I use an alternate DHCP server. Is there a way to tell the primary DHCP server to forward network boot requests?

I would figure that PXE boot would do a DHCP request, get that from the main DHCP server, then do another broadcast message to look for PXE boot devices on the network.

[colinjones]

Please search the forums on the subjects of network (PXE) booting, DHCP servers and dual/single NIC cores. There is a huge amount of documentation and commentary on this - it has been discussed to death!

Network boot/PXE IS a DHCP/BOOTP service, if you turn off the DHCP on the core, how is it going to find the core to boot from it? The core's DHCP not only gives it an IP address, but also tells it how to boot. You turned off the network boot functionality. Moreover, DHCP in LMCE is essential for plug-n-play discovery of practically all other devices that LMCE talks to.

Short version: either...

1) Read the doco and partition your network with an "external" LAN that your router and existing home network are on, and a new "internal" LAN that your LMCE equipment (MDs, NASs, media shares, IP cameras, VoIP phones, etc) are on. The core needs to have 2 network card, one plugged in to the external network, one to the internal network. NOTE: this is how LMCE is supposed to be set up, and it will all be straightforward if you don't try to re-engineer the system!

2) Go with a single network card installation, bite the bullet and accept that you cannot use your broadband router (or any other device) for DHCP, and allow LMCE to do the lot. You cannot have 2 different DHCP servers on the same network doing different jobs. NOTE: this is not how LMCE is designed, and you WILL have to do a fair bit of network engineering and LMCE configuration to get it to work. Again there are plenty of articles on the wiki or comments in the forums on single NIC installations.

TIP: Choose option 1

[StrangeWill]

Ok, thanks, didn't know DHCP was related to the PXE boot service,

As for the TV Capture/Sound issues, I'm just SOL and need to buy new hardware?

[Zaerc]

Ok, thanks, didn't know DHCP was related to the PXE boot service,

As for the TV Capture/Sound issues, I'm just SOL and need to buy new hardware?

That's a bit hard for us to say, since you don't even know the make and model of your own graphics- and tv-card yourself...  They might just require some additional setup.

[colinjones]

For the sound issue, it sounds like a driver issue. Suggest you start a new thread for that separately and ask the specific question. I have read another post a long time ago about "static". Can't remember what the resolution was, but if it only starts once Linux is up, then it sounds more driver/ALSA related.

As Zaerc says, without knowing what the TV card is, you are going to have a very hard time troubleshooting it. If it is very old or very new, it could have problems. I know you just want to try LMCE to see if "its worth it" on old hardware, but realistically if the hardware isn't supported then you can't really expect a smooth experience. And if you don't know what the hardware is, then you can't even tell whether it is supported or not! So really, you aren't "trying" anything out at the moment. The sure, but expensive, way is to assemble some hardware that is listed as compatible, then try it out. Otherwise, you need to accept that it might not work properly, but that isn't really LMCE's fault

[StrangeWill]

I have a couple other TV Capture cards I had lying around that I'll be trying out, neither of them are on the "works for sure" list, so I'll be finding out if they work.

As for sound cards, going out and getting just about any mid-range card should work, correct? Being as most of them are supported?

Also, can I boot media directors without hard drives from the DVD? That would get around my network boot issue, being as running a second network through the house is kind of a no-go as of now.


Edit:
Okay, got my original TV Capture card kind of working, I only have 13 channels (I had upwards of 70 on my PC using DScaler), and no Audio (I have heard theres a fix for this using the Linux audio mapping, it's being fed in through line in).

Also, I'm assuming you need a cable box to pull guide information, hmm.