I really screwed myself over. I spent a great deal of time picking out the best hardware to buy for my htpc, but I swapped my original choice of barebones for a Shuttle SK43G, for the relatively low price, and the fact that it had two com ports.

THIS WAS A MISTAKE.

I’ve spent the past week trying to get any video to produce itself on my myth setup, but any attempt to access my HAUPPAUGE results in a system lockup.

So I deduced that it was a problem with the VIA Chipset, and that I’d have to buy an alternative MoBo or Barebones….

But as a last test of faith, I decided to install a copy of Microsoft Windows Media Center on my Shuttle, and to my surprise I SAW STATIC!!!

NOW HERE IS WHERE THINGS GET SUPER COMPLICATED:

Simply for testing purposes I used the capture program that comes with Hauppauge to test all the connections, and had success, however I was unable to get both tuners to work at the same time, now while I was researching PVR500 problems I noticed a lot of people had complained that this latest batch of cards has trouble with the second tuner (I don’t know if there is much validity to this problem, but now im wondering if this may be the reason linux kept crashing)

GOING ON….

I was unable to get either driver (especially both) to work with Microsoft Media Center, it kept saying there was an error in the codec (although the Hauppauge player saw crystal clear video)

SO NOW….

I have to figure out what on earth to do…

Do I assume that my week long of updating various drivers was done incorrectly and that with the right combination I could get STATIC from this card? (I had tried updating ivtv, even used the new 0.4.0 driver, I tried updating the kernel (nothing there) I tried updating the firmware (nothing) so I assumed it was the VIA Chipset issue)

OR Do I sell my barebones and buy another one that doesn’t have a VIA Chipset.

OR Do I find out if Hauppauge did in fact sell a bunch of bugged PVR500s.

OR Do I try to install mythtv using another OS besides Knoppmyth?

OR Is there something I missed entirely.

Please send your thoughts, recommendations, advice. I am loosing sleep.

Thank You.

slight update - I was able to get two video signals clearly, at the same time using Hauppauge's Viewer. However MCE still refuses to see the card, it keeps saying "decoder error." So I don't know if this has something to do with my inexperience with MCE or it has somethign to do with the VIA/Hauppauge thing....I know the card physically works, but I'd really like some advice.

Because at this point, as much as I hate the idea of not using myth, its as simple as windows works and myth doesn't at this point.

_________________
SHUTTLE SK43G <--(EVIL VIA BAREBONES)
320 Gig SATA
DVD-RW
HAUPPAUGE PVR-500
512 DIMM RAM

I'd suggest taking this to the ivtv mailing list. Older versions of VIA chipsets were most problematic. Do you know if the 500 is sharing an IRQ? Is Plug N Play disable in the BIOS? Can you assign IRQs in the BIOS? BTW, this isn't the place to discuss MCE. Good luck.

hahaha...hush hush to the MCE.

Don't get me wrong, MCE isn't really an alternative, I'm just trying to understand why it works so easily on Windows, and in linux, any attempt to look at the card causes my system to hang.

I tried the ivtv version that came with knoppmyth R5A16, then I tried 0.3.7k, and finally today I tried 0.4.0; no real difference. Everytime it recognized both the cards, that was never a problem. The only difference I managed to get was when I followed a few guides (some for outdated versions of knoppmyth) and changed a few files around and managed to get a steady black screen that I could eventually exit out of.

Yes, I will try getting help elsewhere, but this forum is the most populated, and it sparked my 'myth'ical journey, figured I might as well check in for advice.

As for the BIOS stuff, I see none of what you asked about. Can't assign IRQs...nothing about plug n play really.

I am honestly considering returning my shuttle to newegg, I'll take the 15% restocking loss, but I want to be sure that my next barebones won't have any of the same problems, I'd hate to make the switch, lose the money and find out that there was a quick fix to solve it.

Bottom line, the card works on this machine, just in the wrong OS. How can I get it to work in Linux?

_________________
SHUTTLE SK43G <--(EVIL VIA BAREBONES)
320 Gig SATA
DVD-RW
HAUPPAUGE PVR-500
512 DIMM RAM

No, this isn't a hush attempt. It is simply a statement of fact. This isn't an Windows/MCE support forum (and I won't tolerate it). I could careless what anyone use for their PVR. I try my best to make KnoppMyth work with various types of hardware. Yes, I'd like to see folks use KnoppMyth (cause it is the best ). But it is a free country... I certainly don't know if the forum is most popular... Some folks don't seem to like my straight up tell it as I see it style. Again, your best bet maybe to query the ivtv mailing list. Of course I'd except the card to work w/ Windows when Hauppuage provides drivers. I'd hardly state that it is works successfully in Windows if works with one app but not MCE. But that is just my 2 cents... BTW, did you update the firmware? Did you add HcwMakoA.ROM to /lib/modules?

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

No, that inyourface-tellitlikeitis attitude is what myth is about. Right?

Hahaha, no worries. I will bump up my messages on the ivtv mailing list, but I will try another fresh install of knopp, do everything and anything I ever did to get earlier versions running better, and if it all still gives me a blank screen, then I'm switch my barebones. I'm committed to the knoppmyth dream. I can't tell you how happy I was when I saw the menu, and the mythweb server.

Thanks again for the advice, and if you or anyone would like to chime in on a barebones system that uses the Athalon XP CPU, I'd appreciate it (or a fix to my problem for that matter).

_________________
SHUTTLE SK43G <--(EVIL VIA BAREBONES)
320 Gig SATA
DVD-RW
HAUPPAUGE PVR-500
512 DIMM RAM

I won't say it is what MythTV is about as I cannot speak for the community. Glad to hear you are committed! I'm sure you'll like the new release as well. Testing with a PVR-500 MCE, it just works!

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Ack.. the memories of trying to run knoppmyth on a via chipset board with two PVR 250s still causes me pain....

I ended up dumping the mobo for an nforce one and have been happy since.

I did get my via board to work mostly ok when I set the "PCI Latency Timer" to >=128 in bios instead of the default 32.

-Aubrey

I'm not experienced enough with Myth to give you an answer. But what I *can* tell you is that if you decide to return your barebones to NewEgg, you might want to consider replacing it with the barebones small-form-factor I'm using. A Biostar iDeq 210P. Got this one from NewEgg as well (cheaper than a Shuttle). It uses an nForce3 250Gb chipset. Socket 754. So far it appears to be working well with KnoppMyth R5A16, Athlon64 3000+, 200Gb Seagate PATA, 1Gb Corsair ram, PVR-150, eVGA nVidia MX4000 64Mb. Onboard audio and onboard ethernet work fine too. I have a NEC 3540 DVD burner in there also, but haven't verified that with Myth yet.

Only problem I've had related to the hardware (that I have found thus far) was when initially booting KnoppMyth CD to install. It hung near the very start on some "Detecting SCSI..." message. Booted with "knoppmyth noscsi alsa screen=800x600" and everything went smoothly from there. "alsa" and "screen" parameters are optional, you may or may not want these.

This same system runs Windows 2000 nicely off of it's second harddrive (a SATA Seagate that I currently have disconnect while playing with KnoppMyth). As another point of reference, I also installed Debian on that SATA drive. Watch out for pre-2.6.10 kernels and the nForce3 chipset SATA though. This is a known kernel problem. I couldn't get Sarge or Edge to work with all the hardware (either didn't detect SATA or didn't detect ethernet). Sid worked OK though, with it's 2.6.12(?) based installer. Knoppix also worked fine, as did Ubuntu 5.10 preview.

Being small form factor you don't have much expandability. Only one PCI slot. One AGP slot. Two slots from ram. Two internal 3.5" bays, one 5.25" bay. This thing runs very cool. Typically around 38-40 degress C. for a CPU temp. Extremely quiet under Windows where Biostar software monitors temps and spins fans down to low speed. More fan noise under Linux, as I haven't yet investigated if there are any options to monitor temps and lower fan speed. It's not terribly noisy under Linux, but compared to it's near-silence under Windows you can tell a difference. With the fans running at their default (medium?) speed under Linux, the exhausted air is cool, not warm. More like an air conditioner than a heater.

One other issue with the Biostar was a USB jumper was set incorrectly on the motherboard. Rear USB ports worked fine, but plugging a thumbdrive into the fronts yielded an immediate power down. Oops! Fixed jumper that was incorrectly set from the factory and all was well. Very quick email tech support turnaround from Biostar (one to two hours). They pegged the jumper problem immediately.

Oops. I just noticed you said you want an Athlon XP barebones. So that Biostar 210P (socket 754) won't work for you. Biostar makes a socket A barebobes, the model 210V, but it apparently uses a Via chipset. Just like your Shuttle. Bummer.