User:Afkpuz

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Revision as of 18:12, 7 January 2009 by Afkpuz (Talk | contribs)

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Currently, I am only running one hybrid at the moment 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 also have a surround sound receiver being controlled by my gyroscopic remote.

Hybrid Hardware

Motherboard

Foxconn 945P7AA-8KS2


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

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

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

1 160GB IDE hard drive for the operating system 1 1TB SATA hard drive for media storage


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.