First off, I appologize in advance for the long post. But, I notice how much people here appreciate accurate descriptions.
Second, my system's hardware configuration:
AMD Athlon XP 2200+
Gigabyte GA-7DXR+ Motherboard
AMD 761 north bridge & VIA 686B south bridge
512 DDR400 RAM
WD 80gig IDE hard drive
Toshiba DVD-ROM IDE
ATI Radeon 9200 128mb AGP
Creative Soundblaster Live! PCI
D-Link DFE-530TX+ PCI
Intel 530EP Modem PCI (if it matters)
ATI Remote Wonder (v1)
ATI TV Wonder Pro PCI
ASUS PCI tv-tuner (I dont have the model number and such on hand. I dont really care about it - it's just a secondary card I had laying around)
I know it isn't the ideal configuration for KnoppMyth and such, but it's what I have avaliable at the moment.
I chose the auto-configuration installation method when I first installed KnoppMyth. It didn't seem to complain of anything, so I presume there were no detected problems. (a lot of it was going by so quickley, so I couldn't read it all.) After the install finishes, it comes up with the auto-configuration thinggie, I tell it what I want, but than the problems start.
The first time I installed knoppmyth, I made the mistake of telling to clear the established card settings. Eventually I got it to display A/V static. (thats the first sign of progress, right?
) After escaping out of MythTV, I was playing around in the desktop (or whatever you want to call it) trying to lower the screen resolution because my monitor wasen't completally compatiable with the one it chose. The system soon locked up, and I had to do a hard reset because the reset option on the log-on screen wasen't responding. When the OS tried to boot up again (this would be only the seconed time the OS ever goes through its boot up sequence) it gets about half way and then throws this huge list of errors and things that went wrong, and locks up. No matter how many times I reset, it keeps doing that.
Instead of attempting to fix whatever is/was wrong, (I only have about 1.5 years of sporadic linux expierence; I'm not that ambitious yet) I put the KnoppMyth disc in and told it to install again, useing just about the same settings as I had used before, wipping the previous instillation. (this time I didn't wipe the card settings, and just [tried] to do what it told me to do.)
After the seconed installation finished and came up, it's auto-configure wizard that was going around changing things locked up at the end. (just after that "Good Luck" message ironically.) After a hard reset, it did wouldn't boot again; same slew of errors as before. About an hour later (after I got up to have dinner and came back to it) I booted it up the seconed time, it worked fine (even my remote was magically working) except for all the parts of it that do things. Whenever I select "Watch TV" it claims there are recordings useing all reasorces and that I'll have to cancel those before I can watch TV. I put a (commercial encrypred) DVD into the drive and told it to play that, but it just did nothing after about 10 minutes of spinning around and blinking. (dvd drive activity, no hard drive activity.) Also, I selected "TV Settings" from the set up menu, and it locked up. With just about anything that I do in MythTV, it seems to either completally lock up, or freeze for several minutes while apparentally doing nothing. As I said, it works fine, except when you want it to do something.
My main question is, are there any known problems with this sort of hardware configuration that will prevent normal opperation? Replacing any hardware will be limited to what parts I have on hand or can swap out from other systems.
Is there anything software-wise I can do to fix all these malfunctions and errors?
Do I have any hope at all of successfully casting off my "Windows Media Center Edition" chains? (I put "WMCE" in quotes because I don't see it as a
real operating system) Or am I doomed to system imcompatiabilaties and malfunctions in every linux venture I make?
I am eternally greatfull to anyone who can assist me.