Zotac's Ion Board On Windows 7: Nvidia Re-Arms Intel’s Atom - compatability?

[krys]

Back on topic, I just ordered a Zotac Ion board from NewEgg. The board with PSU + 2x 1GB of RAM + free shipping ended up at $189.
I will post any results I have once I get to play with it im sure next week sometime.
-Krys

[totallymaxed]

Andrew,
Is that box similar to the HD homerun in that it sends the video feed to LinuxMCE via ethernet? or is there an av output on it somewhere?
-Krys

No the DVBworld HD-2104 is a USB based DVB-S tuner...it connects to a USB2.0 port. This isnot a devices that connects to a LAN like the HDHomerun....and no there is no AV output on this tuner.

Andrew

With that in mind, USB uses the CPU directly, the more mb/s through the usb connection, the more the cpu works, so with a non-usb tuner, your cpu results would be lower.

Well 'real world' experience with the the 2104 tells us that this is not a significant factor...even when receiving and streaming several 1080i HD streams. We also have experience with system that have upto 6 USB DVB-T tuners (DVB-T is currently only SD here in the UK on the 6 'free to air' multiplexes).

The problem of power usage and Motherboard damage is a real one once you get to 3+ non-usb Sat tuners. So we tend to use non-usb tuners mainly for capture of analog sources.

All the best

Andrew

[dizmoduck]

i'll just want to order one but how mush ram shut i put on it? 2 or 4 GB?

I'll thinking to pix boot the thing and i'll hok it up to the TV and HI-FI

[Pnuts]

unless your using it for something other then a MD, 2gb is fine, if not overkill for an MD.

[totallymaxed]

i'll just want to order one but how mush ram shut i put on it? 2 or 4 GB?

I'll thinking to pix boot the thing and i'll hok it up to the TV and HI-FI

All our Zotac's have 2gig...go with that its more than enough for anything.

Andrew

[dizmoduck]

thanks

[krys]

Woo hoo, I just checked and it looks like my Zotac Ion board should be waiting for me when I get home today, I hope to get this thing up and running ASAP and I will report the details back here.
-Krys

[roberto99]

Both the Zotac-230 and the Zotac-330 motherboards work well. You will have to do the usual NIC fixes in initramfs and upgrade to to the nVidia 180.51 and alsa 1.0.19 drivers etc. In fact all the Ion motherboards tested so far work excellently.

Look for Zotac ION-ITX-A & Zotac ION-ITX-B boards.

Andrew

Hi Andrew

Finally recived my copy of the board. I guess with "usual NIC fixes in initramfs" you meand this guide: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Unrecognized_NIC
Tried to install today but had no luck with 'kernel module' & RTL8211CL on google. What did you use as 'kernel module' ?
NB: Does this still apply? --> Caveat: Whenever you click Regenerate this media director, you have to redo the step for the initial ramdisk of the media director.


Also I never upgradet alsa drivers --> is there a guide as I did not find any?

Appreciate any help

Thanks
Roberto

[jaysonraymond]

On 8.10 after enabling boot from network in the BIOS, my diskless ION-ITX is booting from the hybrid/core without requiring any updates for the NIC.

I have run the AV Setup and the video tests don't appear to be doing the blending correctly. (As an aside the Dolby Digital and DTS appear to be working correctly out of the box).

After all the Orbiter screens are generated and the MD is setup however, it boots to an error of "Orbiter failed to setup transparency. Please check if transparency...", then after a period it displays a gray screen w/ cursor, then returns to the error screen again.

I am assuming that the configuration for this diskless MD needs to have the Nvidia drivers updated as I had done with my hybrid core - but am not sure how to do this for a diskless node.

I can't seem to drop to the KDE desktop on the Diskless MD nor VNC into it - but can SSH to it where I could run an apt  command .... any and all suggestions greatly appreciated for the appropriate wa to do this.

Jayson

[krys]

try searching the forum for a thread called..... zotac ion board. It has a link to a wiki (that you can also search) that tells you in detail what needs to happen.
-Krys

[jaysonraymond]

Thanks Krys - I appreciate the suggestion.

I tried the steps you outlined on http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/ZOTAC_ION on the device - I had already installed with UI2, but this didn't eliminate the "Unable to start transparency service" error.  (I presume you meant to execute these steps from a CTL-ALT-F2 login on the diskless MD Zotac - though I also applied them on my hybrid core as well, to no avail.)

I then deleted the device and attempted to re-add it using UI1 - then my errors changed to "Orbiter failed to start OpenGL".

Still scratching my head...

[krys]

You only want to do these steps for the Zotac MD. I personally did them using ssh, instead of CTL-ALT-F2.
To use ssh:
Get on your core, and open a terminal.

sudo ssh moonXX            (where "XX" is the MD's device number)

Once you are ssh'd into your MD just copy/paste the commands from that wiki and you should be set, it has worked for me multiple times now.
-Krys

[jaysonraymond]

You are correct Krys - your procedure does work for UI1. Thank you.

My mistakes were in trying to get either form of UI2 to work.

Now just need to get Andrew to help us figure out what he did to get this running...

[krys]

My method worked for UI2, I just started in the Basic UI so that the MD would complete install, then after I updated the drivers I switched into UI2.
-Krys