Difference between revisions of "User:Afkpuz"

Revision as of 17:35, 7 January 2009

Currently, I am only running one hybrid (7.10 rc2) which is plugged into a generic 32" LCD tv. I'm using the vga plug on my video card/tv and running at 720p. I use UI2 w/ overlay to avoid the ugly tearing that occurs when using UI2 w/ alpha blending. I also have a surround sound receiver being controlled by my gyroscopic fiire remote which you may have seen in the LMCE demo video.

Youtube videos

I have made several youtube videos talking about LMCE and how to set it up the way I have my system running. Search for username pandaman123213 or click the link below to see my videos. Feel free to ask about my setup and I'd be willing to make more videos or help you. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pandaman123213&search_type=&aq=f

Compatibility of my setup

DVD install never seems to work. I might have a bad disc, but I always use the CD installer. Kubuntu takes about 45 mins to install and LMCE another 75 mins. Altogether, it takes about two hours to install and then about 30 mins to set up tuner, recording schedules, and clear out those flickr pictures for my own. Analog and digital surround sound on the motherboard are plug and play and fully supported. Fiire remote is autodetected and my tuner card is fully supported. That TV tuner card also has mpeg encoders built in (it's a dual analog with dual encoders) and those take the load of encoding off of the CPU. Network cards work perfectly as well.

Hybrid Hardware

Motherboard

Foxconn 945P7AA-8KS2 Here's the newegg info page. It's discontinued, but still useful. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186070

CPU Type Pentium D / Pentium 4 HT / Celeron D FSB 1066/800MHz North Bridge Intel 945P South Bridge Intel ICH7

Memory Number of Memory Slots 4×240pin Memory Standard DDR2 667 Channel Supported Dual Channel

Expansion Slots PCI Express x16 1 PCI Express x1 2 PCI Slots 3

Storage Devices PATA 3 x ATA100 6 Dev Max. SATA 3Gb/s 4

Onboard Audio Audio Chipset Realtek ALC880 Audio Channels 8 Channels

Onboard LAN LAN Chipset Broadcom BCM5789KFB Max LAN Speed 10/100/1000Mbps

Rear Panel Ports USB 4 x USB 2.0 S/PDIF Out 1x Coaxial Audio Ports 6 Ports Onboard USB 4 x USB 2.0

CPU

Intel Pentium 4 631 Cedar Mill 3.0GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 86 (775_VR_CONFIG_05A) 65 (775_VR_CONFIG_06) Single-Core Processor Here's the newegg information page. It's discontinued, but for what it's worth. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116004

Video Card

MSI NX8400GS-TD512E GeForce 8400 GS 512MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card

This card works very well. Driver is automatically installed in both DVD and CD install method.

Ram

pqi 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5400)

TV Capture Cards

Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 500 MCE Dual tuners onboard with MPEG2 encoders for each.

Input Devices

Logitech 967557-0403 wireless keyboard and mouse Generic usb cd/dvd/burner drive Generic dvd drive in the tower

Fiire Chief gyration remote

Audio receivers

YAMAHA YHT-390BL 5.1 Channel Home Theater in a Box System http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882115124

Hard Drives

1x HITACHI Deskstar 7K160 HDS721616PLAT80 (0Y30002) 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA133 for the operating system

1x SAMSUNG HD103UI 1TB 5400 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s for media storage

Misc Network Notes

Right now, I'm not in a situation where I can let LMCE control my network, so I have turned of the DHCP router in the web admin page. This doesn't seem to phase LMCE at all and I believe I am at full functionality for my equipment. I also bought a cheap secondary network card from fry's electronics. Sorry, I cannot remember what model it is, but this for future network expansion.

Things of note

Sometimes, after going to the KDE desktop, mixer settings are set to zero. I just put the volume back to normal when this happens. I also reboot after I'm finished using the KDE desktop just to save cpu consumption and to avoid that problem. Now, since I use s/pdif coax, this problem is gone. Also note, desktop sounds, like the KDE log in sound scratchy through s/pdif coax. Linuxmce sounds work great though, so not a big deal

TV tuner is fully supported and detected during normal setup. However, LMCE defaults the channel frequency table to us-broadcast. That means I only receive channels 2-11. I usually go into mythtv and change it manually.

Fiire remote is plug and play.

I've noticed that this particular motherboard has some weird quirks. If I leave the computer off for a day or so, the bios gets corrupted and reverts to default settings. This is no big deal as I just change the settings back to what they were and no need to reinstall. I think this is just some bug with my particular one and not the model in general.

My surround sound system is a YAMAHA YHT-390BL 5.1 Channel Home Theater in a Box and I'm using s/pdif coax to get sound to it. I bought some nice cord for this that said it was lossless. Even if it's not and that was just a marketing ploy, it only cost $14 on newegg.com, so I can take that hit. I don't have an IR blaster, so I mapped the volume buttons on the fiire remote to control volume. That means I have to push the "tv" button on the fiire remote, then change volume, and then switch back to normal mode to control LMCE. No big deal.