I know knothing about linux and the PC world of assembly is new to me. I put together the following system:

Intel motherboard 955x 775
Intel Pentium D processor 830
1 GB DDR2 memory
2 SATA 3G samung 250GB HD
Samsung DVD R/W drive
GigiaByte 6600 GT GV-NX66T256DE
Haupauge PVR 250

I have no known problems - but I only ventured into the BIOS and went through the various screens verifying the BIOS saw my hardware. SO the video card is pumping out to my monitor. I put in the KnoppMyth disk and booted. This is a bootable CD with R5B7 that a friend of mine created 4/13/2006. I am temporarily using a 15" monitor hooked to the VGA port on the GigaByte video card. I get to the KnoppMyth prompt "Boot:". I can switch between the F2 and F3 screens. I have tried:

1. hitting return on BOOT:
2. entering knoppmyth
3. entering knoppmyth (+ various resolutions that are allowed on F3 screen.)


All three give me the same result. I see:
vmlinuz...........
miniruut.gz...........
(screen goes blank)

And that is all. I need to reset or cycle power. Any help would be appreciated.
Scot

Did you search? "SATA is still problematic"
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6321
http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=PickingComponents
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... light=sata

Did you read Cecil's installation instructions? They include the fact that you need to do a manual install as well as the steps to use.
http://www.mysettopbox.tv/doc.html

I will go read the links posted. But remember, I have no OS at this point. Being new, I assume some from of linux OS will get installed and THEN I get prompted for "manual" install. I never get to the screen that allows me to select "manual" install and setup my SATA drives.

Try

1. type "tv" at BOOT: prompt
2. Hit Enter

That will se you to use a diffrent resolution.

Cool idea! Well it did change the video mode to something that kept the text for the ERROR on the screen. I am not sure why simply setting the video mode option to 800x600 or 640x480 did not do this for me. Anyway, doing this BOOT: TV operation kept text on the screen readable after running "miniroot.gz" and this was:

Ready

Uncompressing Linux...

Invalid compressed format (err=1)

-- System Halted

Thanks for the help. I assume this comes from a bad CD? Although this CD has been used by 2 other persons to install KnoppMyth. Anyway I will get another KnoppMyth install CD, and go again. As a side note, Knoppix installed flawlessly. So I have hope that this Myth thing will work on this system.

This is a new system installation, with intel 955 motherboard and pentium D and SATA only HDs, I believe. So, I will post more information as I get further into the Myth install.

Hi,scrowner,

I don't mean to be a wet blanket here however this is not a good combination, new person to linux and serial drives ....

To install to serial drives you have to do manual mode, setup your partitions, id the type, and then install. After the install, when you quit it drops you back to a prompt at which time lilo.config requires a tweak and then be installed.

It is not hard to do, just requires special steps over a plain ol' ide. Being new and to help you get a little more comfort, I would suggest trying on an ide drive so you get a better feel of the system. Just to learn you can easily get by with 10 gig or > Is that an option for you?

Mike

@scrowner. Like mjl said if PATA is an option go for it until you are more comfortable with linux.

If you have to use SATA my quote in this thread details how to do it in R5B7.

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9141


If that doesn't do it possibly try chaning media (CD-R -vs- CD-RW) or worst swap out the CDROM. I have seen weird cases where some drives don't like certain media.

Thanks for the info. I have read about the SATA drive install and it does not seem to complicated to me. I will follow the steps I have read here. I will go check up on what PATA is and possibly set the drives up for this.(?)

I made a CD with the knoppmyth image! I had never before made a CD and I was able to locate a freeware ISO burner and it worked fine. I did this on a uSoft system I have. I placed the CD into the new myth system and it went past where it crashed before and it started looking at my system. However, the FIRST line printed on the screen was:

PCI failed to allocate mem resource #6:20000@50000000 for 0000:01:00.0

I have not searched what this is and hope it is fixable or ignorable. This error does not appear when installing Knoppix. Secondly, when the selection screen appears neither Keyboard nor mouse work. I tried removing and re-inserting to no avail. The boot text indicates USB devices found and is controlled by "hotplug". I have booted Knoppix and my devices, keyboard and mouse, behave as expected. I have heard USB keyboard and mouse may be a problem so I will search and see what is up.

After reading many other sites, I was able to get the USB keyboard to work on my system. I am sure tjc will be harping in here with some links to "I told you so". But my point of placing this info in here is to let others trudge on with Knoppmyth. The things I tried for getting USB to work:

1. Unplugging and pluging back in. Result: ignored. I even try removing the keyboard from system boot as Knoppmyth will automatically boot without the keyboard. And then I plugged the USB keyboard back in and it still did not work.

2. I read that specifically you need to get to the setup screen of Knoppmyth and then unplug the USB keyboard for > 5 seconds and plug it back in to the SAME port. Upon plugging it back in you should see the CD drive light come on and load the driver to get the keyboard to work. I did this and the CD did nothing. Also the keyboard did not work.

3. I read that the BIOS of the system may cause problems with USB knoppmyth. This one scared me as I ONLY have a USB keyboard. So I took a chance. I went to the BIOS and disabled USB 2.0 operation, which I assume simply dropped it to 1.x operation. I saved the BIOS and rebooted. My keyboard worked fine in the initial stages of Knoppmyth booting but stopped working at the knoppmyth configuration selection screen. So I then did STEP 2 above and BINGO the CD light came on and keyboard worked!

I had a lot of trouble finding posts on this site using its search engine to find "USB keyboard installation" issues. I had better luck with google. I have not used nor seen a "PS/2" keyboard in YEARS! I know I stated I am not a computer person but in my field I do use computers. Why not get this fixed? I did see a post that it was soon to be fixed and it had a date of 3/17. Still not fixed? Anyway, with a little bit of persistence I think most of you out there can at least get to the configuration screen and have it work with a USB keyboard. Now.....I am onto MANUAL install because I have SATA drives!

As for the little message I get when knoppmyth is booting to its configuration selection screen:

PCI failed to allocate mem resource #6:20000@50000000 for 0000:01:00.0

I did a bit of hardware elimination. I removed the PVR 250 and this was not the cause of the PCI problem. I had hoped not because a lot of user selected this card to use. That leaves only one other installed PCI device and that is my video card. This error may be a motherboard incompatibility or it could be my PCI express video card. I do not have video on my motherboard so I can not remove this video card and test for the removal of the error.

What about disabling the devices integrated on the motherboard? Sound, LAN(s), firewire, those are just PCI devices too. You don't have onboard h/w RAID enabled ?

I disabled all devices in the BIOS. Specifically, LAN, Sound, firewire and all that were provided to be disabled. Knoppmyth still placed this line first on the screen when booting to the configuration selection. My SATA bus can work in three modes and I selected IDE. I did not see anything in the BIOS that indicated H/W raid was enabled. So, this still leaves the Gigabyte video card on the PCI express bus. At this time it is kind of pointing to the video card..

PATA is simply the old school IDE cable hard drives. If you have a spare one lying around you could use that to do an auto install.

I had to go away for a while. While away, I tried many other installs to get Mythtv working. I was begining to believe it was just that - a myth. My tests included Knoppixs (many strange video problems), Fedora (every single step in the instructions to install myth on Fedora 4 had to be modified and I got to installing video drivers before giving up), and then RC7 arrived!

RC7 actually installed on my above listed machine. I can view/record/see channel listings on my 15 inch monitor. I connected up my TV by connecting the DVI out of the 6600 to one of the HDMI inputs of the TV. The default Myth configuration displayed on half horizontally of my TV.

There are instructions here for nVidia cards that require you to replace the XF86Config-4 with the nVidia verision of the file. I did this. I get a blank screen after the Myth boot operations. This blank screen is both on the small VGA monitor and on the TV. I tried hooking individually the TV and the monitor and doing a cold boot - but each resulted in a blank screen. So, I reverted back to original XF86Config-4 file and my monitor is back working and the TV image is there but only half screen (horizontally).

I can feel Myth becomming a real TV recording package. I just need to solve this video issue. My TV is:

Sony 60XS955 (HD capable TV) using input 7 HDMI that has RCA audio in.

I assume someone has the modifications needed for the XF86Config-4 file for this? Is there another file I need to be tweeking?

Thanks,
Scot

If you issue is no longer a blank screen with install, please start a new thread.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!