LinHES Forums
http://forums.linhes.org/

Combined FE/BE for HDTV
http://forums.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17214
Page 1 of 1

Author:  kbohrer [ Thu Nov 08, 2007 11:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Combined FE/BE for HDTV

# Video type: HDTV (maybe I'll get analog working later)
# Type of system: combined front- and back-end
# Noise level: basically silent

# CASE: Antec SOLO midtower
# PSU: Corsair HX520 w/modular cables
# MOTHERBOARD: ASUS M2N-E (AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 Ultra MCP ATX)
# CPU: AMD Athalon X2 4800+, AM2 65nm Brisbane
# RAM: Corsair XMS2 DHX 1GBx2 (DDRII 800, 240 pin)
-- these have the heatsinks on them
# CPU HEATSINK: Scythe SCNJ-1000 Ninja/1100
-- replaced included fan with a Noctua NF-S12-1200
# NORTHBRIDGE HEATSINK: built-in to motherboard
# FANS: very quiet fans mounted with rubber mounts
-- Noctua SF-S12-1200 120 mm main case fan,
-- another Noctua SF-S12-1200 120mm CPU fan,
-- a Nexus Real Silent Case Fan DF1208SL-3 92mm front case fan
# CD/DVD-RW: Asus DRW-1814BL
# HDD: very quiet hard drives mounted by suspension in rubber 'bands'
-- Western Digital 1TB WD10EACS for myth tv recordings
-- Western Digital Scorpio 120GB WD1200BEVS for OS and other data
# GRAPHICS CARD: EVGA GeForce 7600GS fanless
# SOUNDCARD: none- using sound on motherboard (includs SPDIF)
# TUNER CARD 1: AirStar HD5000
# TUNER CARD 2: DVICO FusionHDTV5 Gold RT
# TUNER CARD 3: DVICO Fusion HDTV5 Gold
# REMOTE KEYBOARD/TRACKBALL: ione Scorpius-P20MT 2.4GHZ RF
# REMOTE CONTROL: Packard Bell serial IR reciever and JP1 8910 One-For-All remote

COST: $1450.00

I designed this system to replace my 2 Replay PVR's in my living room, and to let me record true HDTV. I used a lot of the recommendations on the SilentPC website, and that has worked out very well. After about 4 weeks of struggling to get Debian Etch and its MythTV binaries from debian-multimedia.org to work I finally decided to give Knoppmyth a try on a spare partition that I had set aside for Windows, in case I needed it. I did a Manual Install and changed the unused FAT32 partition to an Linux "ext3" partition. I was truly amazed that Knoppmyth worked out of the box. Sound was coming through the headphone jack in the front of the machine, but to get the digital sound output to my receiver I did have to run "alsamixer" to unmute the "IEC958" sound.

The only other problem was that my serial IR receiver from a Packard Bell remote was not in the list of lirc remotes - so I did not initially set that up. However, it is now working fine configured as "other serial".

------------------------
Now, I did do some other software setup - but it wasn't neccessary to use Knoppmyth as it was installed. However, I wanted to use a logical volume for my HDTV recordings. I'm not sure where I would have been able to set up the LVM stuff during the Knoppmyth install - I didn't see any options for that. However, LVM and its tools were included in Knoppmyth, so that was great.

Because I had used the Debian installer on the disks before installing Knoppmyth, I was already using LVM with my 1TG disk as a logical volume for myth recordings. After installation Knoppmyth recognized the volume group, physical volume, and logical volume but the logical volume was "not active". I had to run the lvchange -ay command to make it active and edit /etc/fstab to get it mounted. After mounting the logical volume on top of /myth/tv, I had to stop the mythtv backend and restart it so it would use the logical volume. (I deleted the stuff in the original /myth/tv directory that I mounted over.) On reboot, the logical volume was again inactive and unmounted, so I added a few lines to the /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend script to make it active and mount it.

I must say that by the time I got around to using Knoppmyth, I had already given up on some hardware that was problematic. In particular, a USB wireless adapter that had no Linux device driver and needed its Windows device driver wrapper in "ndiswrapper". Also, the WinTV 950 USB ASTC/NTSC tuner, which only has an experimental Linux device driver. I did get these to work, but always managed to introduce some other problem in the process. (I'm a retired software engineer that worked on Unix operating systems in the 1980's - a "POSIX" pioneer.)

Author:  goonzo [ Tue Jul 08, 2008 8:07 am ]
Post subject: 

Hi.

im looking for a mobo with s/pdif that is supported in knoppmyth.

i found a similar mobo: ASUS M2N-XE nForce 430
I assume that its the next generation or something since I cannot find the M2N-E for sale anymore.

the audio codec is Realtek ALC662.
your mobo( ASUS M2N-E nForce 570) has AD1988.

The complete differnt codecs implies that there is no guarantee that s/pdif works as good as it did for you?

Author:  kbohrer [ Mon Jul 14, 2008 2:58 pm ]
Post subject:  getting Realtek spdiff audio to work

goonzo,

Sorry, I don't have any experience with any other codec. Have you already searched the forums for other people that got a board with that same chipset to work ? That's what I'd do. I believe Realtek is pretty common for audio.

Page 1 of 1 All times are UTC - 6 hours
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
http://www.phpbb.com/