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PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 9:56 am 
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Joined: Sun Mar 06, 2005 12:46 pm
Posts: 64
I wanted to share my config as everything worked pretty much out of the box.

Abit NF7-S
256MB 266Mhz DDR
AMD 2400+ Mobile 35W
160GB Seagate (I am already pining for more storage)
Asus/Nvidia 5200 W/DVI (although I have not enabled the DVI or TV out so I can't confirm that they work properly)
PVR-250
Generic BT878 tuner (actually labled Generic Periferals :lol: )
Silverstone LC-01 case
Seasonic Tornado 350 powersupply
Super Silencer heatsink (requires a fan replacement or fanmate to actually be silent, I chose the latter)
a couple of fanmates

I would like to say that I have absolutely no linux experiance and still managed to get a fully functional system up in an evening (not including the connection to the TV, that took a little longer). This is truely a testiment to the great work done by the Mythtv and Knoppmyth Devs.

After I installed R5A10 via the instructions here I enabled the Digital audio out, started the samba share (tip: you probibly need to reconfigure your windows firewall for it to work), and enabled channel changing of my cable box via serial cable (tip: check that you are using a good cable first if it doesnt seem to work :oops: ) with the instructions in the Wiki. The only difficulty I have had (and still do to some extent) is finding the perfect resolution (over vga cable) to feed my Mits 52725. I had a little trouble figuring out how to create and insert modelines for different resolutions, but that has been the only real problem so far, now it is just a matter of tweaking to get it perfect.

This box is very quiet, I can't hear it at all from my couch ~10' away, and runs cool, it is about 1.5" deeper than my audio receiver but definitely looks like stereo equipment. My wife thinks it looks good too! If anyone is looking for a deal on this case check out digitalconnection.com They have it open box (I saw no sign of mine ever being open by the way) from time to time (I have seen then pop up twice in the past 2 weeks) for $80 + $20 for shipping. I am not trying to advertise for them, Its just the best deal I have seen yet for one of these HTPC type cases and I am hoping to help out the other cheapskates like me.

_________________
AMD BE-2400
ASUS M2N-E Motherboard
4GB Ram
Nvidia 9400 Fanless
2 HDHomerun (dual tuner)


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 Post subject: spoke too soon
PostPosted: Tue Mar 22, 2005 9:54 am 
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Joined: Sun Mar 06, 2005 12:46 pm
Posts: 64
Wouldn't you know, as soon as I think I have a stable box it decides to misbehave. I had to remove the BTTV card as it stopped playing nicely with the rest of the system. The audio would drop out randomly and produce very loud bursts of static noise, sometimes it locks up the backend in a loop, and sometimes it just crashes the backend. The box wouldn't stay up for mare than 12 hours at a time. As the tuner kind of sucked anyway I did not even try to figure out the problem.

Before I put in the BTTV card my system was up for 7 days with no problems. Even after removing the card I have been having a couple issues (I don't know if I was just lucky before or if a setting somewhere got modified which has caused the change in behavior). One occational problem being that the backend is no longer able to write to the disk then crashes. And another where the picture just goes black while I am watching something (this has happened in both live tv and recordings) and requires the front end to be restarted. fortunately these are somewhat rare but still happens every few days. I don't know if they are connected yet, I havent had time to search my logs or the forums for answers.

Even with these setbacks my wife is still using it so I suppose things aren't too bad. other than the BTTV card problem I still think this is a tier 1 system.

_________________
AMD BE-2400
ASUS M2N-E Motherboard
4GB Ram
Nvidia 9400 Fanless
2 HDHomerun (dual tuner)


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PostPosted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 11:07 pm 
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Joined: Sun Nov 14, 2004 10:04 am
Posts: 263
Location: Toronto, Canada
Joker:

Wait 'til the folks downtown get a load a you! (Yes, that reference was a joke).

Sounds interesting. Please, keep it coming! I've collected almost all my parts and I'm about to build a box very similar to yours, so I'm very interested in how you fare.

My stack of parts so far:

Abit NF7-S ver. 2.0
AMD Athlon XP Mobile 2500+ (cool, low heat)
Zalman CNPS-5100CU CPU Cooler
256MB Geil DDR3500 RAM
Seagate Barracuda IV or V
Nvidia Quadro2 Pro 64MB AGP
Seasonic Super Tornado 350 Rev. A3
SilenX 16dBA 60mm rear fan
Silverstone LC-03B case

The Quadro card, I think will be the only major diff. between your box and mine. I hope I chose a good card. Anyone have any idea if this card might do at least reasonable TV out?

Shplad



Joker wrote:
I wanted to share my config as everything worked pretty much out of the box.

Abit NF7-S
256MB 266Mhz DDR
AMD 2400+ Mobile 35W
160GB Seagate (I am already pining for more storage)
Asus/Nvidia 5200 W/DVI (although I have not enabled the DVI or TV out so I can't confirm that they work properly)
PVR-250
Generic BT878 tuner (actually labled Generic Periferals :lol: )
Silverstone LC-01 case
Seasonic Tornado 350 powersupply
Super Silencer heatsink (requires a fan replacement or fanmate to actually be silent, I chose the latter)
a couple of fanmates

I would like to say that I have absolutely no linux experiance and still managed to get a fully functional system up in an evening (not including the connection to the TV, that took a little longer). This is truely a testiment to the great work done by the Mythtv and Knoppmyth Devs.

After I installed R5A10 via the instruction

s here I enabled the Digital audio out, started the samba share (tip: you probibly need to reconfigure your windows firewall for it to work), and enabled channel changing of my cable box via serial cable (tip: check that you are using a good cable first if it doesnt seem to work :oops: ) with the instructions in the Wiki. The only difficulty I have had (and still do to some extent) is finding the perfect resolution (over vga cable) to feed my Mits 52725. I had a little trouble figuring out how to create and insert modelines for different resolutions, but that has been the only real problem so far, now it is just a matter of tweaking to get it perfect.

This box is very quiet, I can't hear it at all from my couch ~10' away, and runs cool, it is about 1.5" deeper than my audio receiver but definitely looks like stereo equipment. My wife thinks it looks good too! If anyone is looking for a deal on this case check out digitalconnection.com They have it open box (I saw no sign of mine ever being open by the way) from time to time (I have seen then pop up twice in the past 2 weeks) for $80 + $20 for shipping. I am not trying to advertise for them, Its just the best deal I have seen yet for one of these HTPC type cases and I am hoping to help out the other cheapskates like me.


Last edited by shplad on Fri Apr 29, 2005 8:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 3:05 pm 
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Joined: Sun Mar 06, 2005 12:46 pm
Posts: 64
I have found that my problems are known by the mythtv devs and should be fixed in the .18 release. I believe they are fixed in the cvs release but I hosed my system trying to install it. My wife was not amused when she came home to find the system down, so I restored the system back to the way it was and will wait untill those more skilled make a proper release rather than lose the wifes support on the project.

The backend crash is caused when I watch the same channel in live tv for an extended period of time. The ring buffer would fill up causing a 'can't write to disk' type error and then the backend would crash. My temporary solution is to up the size of the live tv buffer and not worry about it.

The front end crashes are a known issue but I have no Idea what is going on there, foutunately they are rare and it is easy to restart so I can live with it.

I guess what I am trying to say is my problems are definitely not hardware related for anyone looking to build a similar setup.

_________________
AMD BE-2400
ASUS M2N-E Motherboard
4GB Ram
Nvidia 9400 Fanless
2 HDHomerun (dual tuner)


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Nov 08, 2006 11:18 am 
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Joined: Wed Nov 08, 2006 10:49 am
Posts: 1
Has any user from the above that posted had any issues with the onboard raid controller of the NF7-S? I am not referring to using it to boot from but just as a drive that is detected by the OS. Thanks in advance.


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