Asus now has a built-in BIOS flash utility. You don't need a bootable disk at all. When the board powers up you hit ALT+F2 and it looks on the floppy disk for a file called A8NVMCMS.ROM and loads it into the flash memory. Reboot and you're updated.

It's detailed in the manual:
http://dlsvr03.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/soc ... vm_csm.pdf

Eric

_________________
KnoppMyth R5.5, Asus A8N-VM CSM (nvidia 6150 onboard video), AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 4200+, two 1GB sticks DDR 400, HD-3000 HDTV card, PVR-150 card, Iguanaworks RS-232 IR receiver/transmitter, Pioneer DVR-110 DVD burner

Speaking of the BIOS, it looks like ASUS just released another one for this board yesterday, 1001. This looks to be an official one, too, I just happened to find it while trying to find the 901 you guys all mentioned. Just go to support.asus.com, click on the Download tab, and the new BIOS is nearly at the top.

And, given the moderate success you guys have had with this board, I went ahead and ordered my setup today: This board, A64 3200+, 250GB spinpoint, pcHDTV3000, NEC 3550 DVD, 512MB RAM, in an MCE601 case. I figure in a week I'll have some hardware to start putting together. I've got my fingers crossed, I've never built a PC from "scratch" before, though I've definitely installed my share of SCSI and video cards.

-Joel

Any ideas on if you can use a CD or memory key as none of my machines have floppys anymore.

Steve

_________________
OpenMedia Limited
New Zealands first open source PVR based on Knoppmyth
http://www.openmedia.co.nz for details

From reading the manual, it only talks about
1. using a DOS boot disk with AFUDOS and the bios file on it
2. using the BIOS update utility in the BIOS (file from floppy disk)
3. updating using a Windows-based Bios update utility

At present, I don't have a floppy disk drive mounted in my case. For BIOS updates, I've simply been opening up the case, plugging in the floppy drive, doing the updates and then unplugging the floppy drive when done.

Perhaps you can make a DOS boot cd rom with the Asus AFUDOS program and the bios file on it.

By the way, I updated to bios version 1001 today. ACPI/DSDT works. It seems ok thus far.

Eric

_________________
KnoppMyth R5.5, Asus A8N-VM CSM (nvidia 6150 onboard video), AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 4200+, two 1GB sticks DDR 400, HD-3000 HDTV card, PVR-150 card, Iguanaworks RS-232 IR receiver/transmitter, Pioneer DVR-110 DVD burner

The built in BIOS upgrader will upgrade using a CDROM instead of a floppy, otherwise just follow the same instructions.

I've now got a fully working box using the vanilla knoppmyth kernel which is awesome. Plus i've developed an alsa 1.0.11 dpkg that fixes all of my audio issues.

Steve

_________________
OpenMedia Limited
New Zealands first open source PVR based on Knoppmyth
http://www.openmedia.co.nz for details

I downloaded the ALSA 1.0.11 drivers, compiled them and installed them without doing any dpkg steps. All the audio problems I had were fixed. I'm not sure if SPDIF sound works or not.

Does your extra step of dpkg give further benefits?

Eric

_________________
KnoppMyth R5.5, Asus A8N-VM CSM (nvidia 6150 onboard video), AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 4200+, two 1GB sticks DDR 400, HD-3000 HDTV card, PVR-150 card, Iguanaworks RS-232 IR receiver/transmitter, Pioneer DVR-110 DVD burner

Need to provide the alsa update to my customers, and as it is an additional kernel module I can just provide the appropriate alsa-modules dpkg file.

Also it is nice an tidy.

Steve

_________________
OpenMedia Limited
New Zealands first open source PVR based on Knoppmyth
http://www.openmedia.co.nz for details

What does the final file/product look like?
A single file - a "one button installer" like is common in the Windows world?

There must be a down side to this, otherwise the ALSA site would have provided a package for everyone to download, right?

Eric

_________________
KnoppMyth R5.5, Asus A8N-VM CSM (nvidia 6150 onboard video), AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 4200+, two 1GB sticks DDR 400, HD-3000 HDTV card, PVR-150 card, Iguanaworks RS-232 IR receiver/transmitter, Pioneer DVR-110 DVD burner

Joel,

Why on earth would you compile a myth system instead of using knoppmyth? I started that route. It's not only mythtv you have to compile but all the other software that is used in concert with myth like IVTV, libffmpeg, etc. There's enough to do with the prefaab knoppmyth without going through all that.

Reconsider.

S

Sparks-

I wasn't aware I'd actually have to compile it all, isn't it all available as RPMs? Plus, with this motherboard I'm going to have to download and compile the very latest ALSA drivers already, right? A friend of mine at work just set up a Myth box and he had FC4 already installed, he said it was just a matter of yumming a bunch of packages down and he was up and running without much trouble.

To be more explicit, not having ever done this before, here's what I see ahead of me, going the FC4 route:

Assemble hardware
Install new BIOS
Install FC4
Install newest ALSA driver
yum down mythtv
Debug/troubleshoot until I'm happy

Going the KnoppMyth route I see:

Assemble hardware
Install new BIOS
Install KnoppMyth
Install newest ALSA driver
Debug/troubleshoot until I'm happy

The only difference would be how I actually get MythTV installed, am I missing something? I've read through all the "setting up MythTV" type stuff, and it seems like the biggest pain for me is going to be getting my database set up. I've got Comcast "Limited Basic" cable ($13/mo, yes, I'm cheap), which technically doesn't even include digital, but my TV has a nice ATSC/QAM tuner, and Comcast is lenient, so I can get digital versions of all my analog channels, they're just spread all over the map and my TV is a bit confused about it. So, I figure I'm going to have a little bit of fun setting it all up in Myth, but that'll be the same with either KnoppMyth or a homebrew FC4 setup, right? Again, tell me if I'm smoking something here. I am more familiar with Fedora than I am with Debian, which is why I was thinking of going the FC4 route, but I certainly don't want to be shooting myself in the foot if I don't have to. Thanks for your concern.

-Joel

As they say in Perl land, TIMTOWTDI (tim toady) - there is more than one way to do it. I just find knoppmyth so convenient. It install the OS and the application in one (I think easy) operation. But that's just me.

S

By final product are you referring to the alsa package or the MythTV box?

The alsa driver is compiled into a dpkg file that works on the knoppmyth R5B7 standard kernel. Hence customers can upgrade to the latest alsa modules without compiling the driver themselves.

All of this is performed using standard debian kernel development tools

Steve

_________________
OpenMedia Limited
New Zealands first open source PVR based on Knoppmyth
http://www.openmedia.co.nz for details

Hi Steve,

By final product, I meant what files do you have after a dpkg procedure? One file that you execute and it does everything? Multiple files that you have to execute? I've never seen the output from a dpkg procedure.

Dpkg is an unknown. I've never performed the procedure before - don't know the steps or the output.

In contrast, I performed 3 simple steps with each of the downloaded/unzipped ALSA components:
"./configure
make
make install
make clean"

It was tedious, but was pretty straightforward - and did work.

Eric

_________________
KnoppMyth R5.5, Asus A8N-VM CSM (nvidia 6150 onboard video), AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 4200+, two 1GB sticks DDR 400, HD-3000 HDTV card, PVR-150 card, Iguanaworks RS-232 IR receiver/transmitter, Pioneer DVR-110 DVD burner

Ok customers plug into a custom apt repository containing the deb files. Plus menus have been added to implement the update process. Screens for this will be up on the OpenMedia website over the next couple of days.

First button does "apt-get update; apt-get -s upgrade" which syncs the apt database, and checks if new packages are available.

Second buttom does "apt-get -y dist-upgrade" which installes the dpkg files. Hence if I need to update the alsa driver on a customers machine I put the dpkg into my repository, and the users can update it themselves.

On the command line you can simply type the following if you have grabbed the custom deb file.

dpkg -i alsa-modules-2.6.15-chw-2_1.0.11-1+10.00.Custom_i386.deb

Hope this makes sense.

Steve

_________________
OpenMedia Limited
New Zealands first open source PVR based on Knoppmyth
http://www.openmedia.co.nz for details

OK, so I've finally put my box together, installed everything I want, and everything seems to be working ok except TV. In other words, I have a $900 DVD player .

Here's what's going on. As soon as my box was up and running, I downloaded the hidef torture test from pchdtv.com (tst.ts, I think), and it ran fine, only 40-50% CPU. Looked great, too. I also pulled down a space-shuttle launch video from somewhere, 450MB worth, and that also looked great. Then, I hooked the box up to my cable (Comcast, SF Bay Area, TV tuner (Samsumg SP-R4234) gets lots of digital channels just fine), and after going down lots of blind alleys, I finally got the pcHDTV-3000 to pick up a signal. The trouble is, the signal appears to be too full of errors to be watchable. Using standard video (as opposed to XvMC), the video is very broken up, choppy, same with the sound, but it continues to struggle through as long as I can tolerate it. With XvMC, the video freezes after a few seconds, I'm guessing because it doesn't deal as well with errors, and I have to pause and restart the stream.

Anyway, at this point the system isn't really usable, but I know you guys out there have got this motherboard/video card combo to work. The only thing I can think of at this point is the power supply. People over on the pchdtv.com forums have said that if you don't have a beefy, stable power supply, you run into exactly this problem. So, I'm curious, which power supplies are you guys using? I, perhaps foolishly, bought the Ahanix MCE601 case, which is very pretty, but it comes with a 350W non-standard ATX power supply. That means I can't just chuck the power supply and get a standard ATX one, the bolt patterns or fan placement or something is different, though apparently someone at pcalchemy.com is making a retrofit bracket. I just hope I don't have to go that route, I don't want to just abandon the power supply. Plus, what would I say on eBay? "Very pretty 350W power supply, might be good enough for your application but possibly not"? I might get $0.50 for it.

Are there any other possibilities for my symptoms? I'm still running FC4 + more or less the Jarod Wilson instructions. I may drag home a spare hard drive and try KnoppMyth (finally, I hear you saying), to see if it's a software issue, though aside from being current on the nVidia drivers, I haven't heard of errors like this being related to software. They've mostly been because the CPU is too slow.

I'm still happy with my choice to do it the hard way first, though, since now I understand a lot more about how the system works. I'm just hoping for a silver bullet at this point.

-Joel