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.

_________________
$life = ($person == "ADRegner") ? "computers" : null;

Yes, I know I can’t spell. But since you are able to correct my spelling, apparently you still understood me. Imagine that...

UPDATE: Now it dosen't boot up anymore. It crashes at seemingly random points. Most of the time there is a lot of "Stak", "Call trace", and "Code" data given, presumably about its current condition at the time of the crash. Each time it's different. Below are a few of the error messages I have seen.




The last two I have seen several times.

Sometimes, after resetting enough times, it will finish, and displays the GUI. How can I get into the backend setthings and configure my tuner card(s)? I don't believe the system is reconizing them.

Hope this helps with a solution.

_________________
$life = ($person == "ADRegner") ? "computers" : null;

Yes, I know I can’t spell. But since you are able to correct my spelling, apparently you still understood me. Imagine that...

I would suggest that you double check the equipment requirements for knoppmyth and mythtv. When I was putting my box together, ATI video cards were discouraged and ATI wonder TV cards were explicitly not supported. ATI has made it difficult to use their cards with Linux by withholding the necessary information to create solid drivers.

Improvements in myth have been happening all the time and they may now be supported, but even so it is likely that they are the source of your difficulty. You will want to do some extensive searching both here and on google to see if others have tackled the same equipment.

Edit:
Here is the relevant piece from the mythtv documentation page.

NOTE: The ATI All-in-Wonder cards (which are not the same as the ATI TV Wonder, TV Wonder VE or TV Wonder Pro) will not work as a MythTV capture device because the GATOS http://gatos.sourceforge.net drivers that are available provide only a limited subset of the V4L API. The TV Wonder series of cards are supported by the Bt8x8 Video4Linux driver.

Newer cards may use the CX23881 series of chips; a driver is available at http://bytesex.org/cx88/.

After you have installed a suitable capture device, you can check that the kernel sees it with lspci. Look for an entry labeled "Multimedia video controller". To get more detailed information about the card, use lspci -v or lspci -vv. Ensure that your system is loading the bttv modules by typing:

# lsmod |grep bttv

You want to see the bttv module listed.

I just booted up (it didnt crash - yay) and ran "# lspci -v". In there was a "Multimedia cideo controler: Conexant WinFast TV2000 XP". Other than that, it dosen't seem to have any data on it other than that it is from ATI Technologies.

I also ran "# lsmod |grep bttv" and the first listing was "bttv 154000 2 dvb_bt8xx,bt878".

I googled for Bt8x8 Video4Linux Driver and found this solaris driver project. What I downloaded from them was a .pkg that I'm not completally sure what to do with.

From the description of what that driver was, it sounded like this bttv driver was the orgional version for linux, so I downloaded that too. But of course, it's not compiled so I have to remember how to ./make it.

I am trying to wade through all this and figure out what to do, but I dont have high hopes. Any help from anyone would be appreciated .

Or maybe I'll just buy one of those Hauppauge PVR-500 cards everyone likes. (gaa! more money)

_________________
$life = ($person == "ADRegner") ? "computers" : null;

Yes, I know I can’t spell. But since you are able to correct my spelling, apparently you still understood me. Imagine that...

Right off the bat... KnoppMyth has been installed this isn't an installation issue therefore your post doesn't belong here. Sounds like you have hardware issues. There are tips all all over the forum on how to address these. First thing I'd suggest is to check your BIOS settings, then boot off the CD and run memtest. You can carry on your troubleshooting from there. Don't response to this post, or this thread will be deleted. Post under the approproate section of the forum.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!