hey .. are the complications regarding SATA and pci-e related to mythtv specifically? .. or is it simply a matter that the linux community not as yet developing full support. if its the second.. then just a matter of time yeah?

i ask.. obviously.. cause the choices of new mobos is kinda limited if i exclude everything with sata and pci-e.

thanks.

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"enter witty comment here"

From reading, my understanding is that SATA is difficult (but perhaps not impossible). If your BIOS has a feature that allows you to treat SATA drives as if they were IDE drives, you've definitely got a chance. I forget the term used.

I don't think PCI-E is definitely a problem except for the issue of tuner/hdtv cards: I don't know of any supported ones that aren't standard PCI cards. So, as long as you have some PCI slots (enough for the cards you plan to install), you should be OK.

-brendan

SATA is a mixed bag. You either need to get the BIOS to play "let's pretend" or do a manual install and even then you may struggle some. There are people who have suceeded with it, but it's definitely not doing things the easy way. Still on my personal "not recommended" list along with USB keyboards and mice.

BTW - Note that this only applies to your primary boot drive.

The only PCIe issue I'm aware of is card availability.

Unasked but worth mentioning, the newer chipsets may not be well supported by Linux kernels yet. In particular I've seen some reports of people having trouble with the MoBo Gbit ethernet. The easy answer to that is a cheap $15-16 D-Link 100Mbit/s PCI network card like I recently installed for my dad. They call out Linux compatibility right on the box and they're not lying.

yeah i realise that some mobos allow you to run in combatability mode .. and that some have got their SATA box working by various clevernesses.. but my question was... are SATA drives a pain simply because they dont work with mythtv .. and hense will never be supported.. or is it just cause the linux support hasnt been totally sorted.

tjc ... pci-e card avalibility.. what do you mean by that? ... just avalibility of cards supported by linux. also.. i only figured of using pci-e for the video card..(i didnt really know of / have any interest in / even thought about pci-e tuner cards). i figured that most mobos only have 1 pci-e.. basically as a replacement for the agp slot.. so its not like any reduction in pci slots..

cheers

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"enter witty comment here"

Re: SATA - It's an OS issue and not just with Linux. Search the forum for more detailed discussion.

Re: PCIe - Very few cards on the market period. Aside from a flock of PCIe x16 video cards and a few disk controllers there is jack-all available. Not network cards, not capture cards, not ... This should change with time, but last time I checked there was a good first order approximation of zero. PCIe Motherboards typically have 1 or 2 (for SLI) PCIe 16x, maybe 1 PCIe 4x, and 2 or 3 PCIe 1x slots, along with 3 (or rarely) 4 PCI slots.

tjc ... i see where youre coming from with the pci-e .. there are fewer pci slots.. like 3.. which i agree.. aint enough.
cheers

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"enter witty comment here"