- Jun 12, 2001
- 8,757
- 43
- 91
Part 1
It started as a Good Idea
I bought and moved into my new house in July and wanted to make it my own. I had been renting in different cities and different states for about twenty years. After unboxing and getting settled, I started in on my projects. I want, in no real order:
- replace the 1952 electric stove with a new gas stove
- add and move phone jacks in the house
- put speakers in the house for a household stereo, including wiring from the crawlspace
- look into getting gas starters for the fireplaces
- renovate the kitchen with ceiling fan, new or remodeled cabinets, cooking backsplash
- pull up the carpet in one room and redo the hardwoods
- BUILD AN HTPC
Of all the things on my list, I thought the HTPC would be the leisure item and one I could do in my spare time while watching TV.
Getting Excited
I have an old full ATX tower that wasn't being used that had gobs of room. Enough for all the fans and a real RAID. The power supply would have to go but that wasn't an issue. My intent would be to build it and put it into the Den closet and feed IR cables to the living room on the other side of the wall. I was reading up on motherboards when I came upon the Tweaktown article that touted the AMD AM2 mobo with the ATI 690G chipset (GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H). I haven't had an AMD since they first came out with the Athlon and i wasn't really interested in going back since Core2Duo was winning all the press. But after reading other reviews, like HardOCP change my mind. Here was a mobo that had all the video outs that I wanted, including HDMI, component, and DVI, but it also had enough oomph for me to watch HD video (when the time comes for me to buy that HDTV and receiver). Also, the thing that finally sold me was the price.
The motherboard, X2 5000+, and 2GB DDR2 ram would be mine for less than $350. That was it, I was sold.
The system as I hoped it to be:
- Tower ATX
- 550W Power supply
- GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H Socket AM2 AMD 690G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz, Model ADO5000DDBOX
- 2 CORSAIR XMS2 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
- SoundGraph iMON VFD, IR Remote / Black Internal VFD/IR Receiver
- SAMSUNG 18X DVD±R DVD Burner (SH-183L)
- 4 SATA 500GB Hard drives (to be in a RAID 5, file storage)
- 1 100GB EIDE Hard drive (for OS and applications)
I Should Have Read More
So...I have a power supply donated to me by a great friend to replace the puny one that a long time ago used to power the ATX's of the 1990s. I have the tower with plenty of room. I got an electrician, while wiring a new 110 outlet for my new stove, to put in a drop inside the closet. And all parts for the HTPC are in from New Egg and PC Alchemy (I-Mon IR controller). Assembly was fun and it only took one night. It would turn out to be the easiest time of the whole project. Now my headaches were just beginning.
Ubuntu Worked on My Dell, So It should Work on This New Stuff, Right?
When I played with Ubuntu on my old Dell 400sc (for an oldie but goody, look up the Hot deal featuring the 400sc), installing and configuring was a snap. Wow, the Feisty Fawn was sooo very close to being what I had always hoped for when thinking up a system for my parents to use. I'm sure you all have had to play help desk to your parents many, many times.
A friend explained to me in the easiest terms possible: Ubuntu + LAMP + MythTV = HTPC Nirvana. I bought the books (Hacks..., Understanding..., etc.) read more online, and read more online, etc. and now I was ready to go. Or not.
Ubuntu Fails
Ubuntu booted fine and even installed okay. However, the screen while 1280x1024, was 16 bpp and grainy. Well, it loaded the common VESA driver. Ok, time to change the driver. OK, it knows that it has an ATI chipset. No wait a moment, it is saying that the chipset is an X1200 and not the x1250. That won't do. If it is really the x1200 then HD and HDMI will not work because the chipset is the 690V and not the 690G. Drats. Ok, maybe it is just being read wrong. So, while Linux users simply hate restricted drivers, I'll have to break from the pack and install them anyway just so that I know the chipset is reporting right.
Let me just say right now, I have never used Linux or any of the distros before Ubuntu. I used Unix in college and at the beginning of the Internet in 1991 when I had to program my own TCP/IP stack and configure my Web server space but I felt it was something I could pick up as needed in this project. well, it is very frustrating. For example, the ATI dirver installation had to be unpackaged from RPM and repackaged as a DEB file for Ubuntu. So when it had errors on installation, I thought it may have been a mistake on my part. Time to go back to teh Intarweb and read, read, read some more.
I came upon a program called 'Envy' which began life as an Nvidia installation program that now helped people install ATI, which by the way, is considered evil, evil, evil (ATI, not Envy) because of people have a very hard time installing ATI cards. Well, it worked this time and I got the right screen depth as well as size. But wait, what happened to my sound, and now when I try to play a DVD, it is all blocky and not usable at all. Well crappola. What have I done now? Damn, nobody has any insight to this motherboard and Ubuntu. The forum folks are helpful but every fix now destroys what I had a little bit more - the DVD-ROM is no longer recognized, going back to VESA is corrupted. In all, 6 different fresh installations and nothing seems to work.
PART II
Fedora 7...Ooooh, So Close!
Okay, where was I?
All right, in all this loading and reloading of OS images on the platform (7 total for Ubuntu - 1 more because I hit enter instead of space when wanting to install LAMP and it skipped over it), my friend Jason asks me to try Fedora. Fedora is the open source product of redHat and Ubuntu is the distro of the Debian platform (which is named after the creator, Ian, and his girlfriend, Debbie. Hmm, what would it be called if his gf was named Leslie - Lesian?)
Fedora has a lot going for it. It's supported by one of the oldest Linux distributors and a lot of these folks live near me. Okay, I'll give it a try.
First off, the fedora site is very confusing. I want to get a live CD version copies but I keep getting pointed to the DVD ISO. Okay, I'll download and burn the ISO, but wait, my new DVD burner is being recognized as only CD burner in my copy of Nero 6.WTF? (By the way, I moved the burner to my old Dell 400sc machine so that I could burn ISOs, updates, and applications. Whatever I try, it won't accept the ISO image. Dambit. So I go online to find a free (as in beer) way of quickly installing a DVD burner application instead of paying for a Nero upgrade. I find one program but it also installs a toolbar on my browsers and starts revving my hard drives (I think it is conducting a search.) So I block all Internet traffic with my firewall, uninstall the toolbar, hack the Registry to prevent it reloading and reinstalling the toolbar. So there went that hour. But you know what, it did burn the ISO correctly. So now I'm off to Fedora-land.
Fedora is different from Ubuntu in that a lot of automated code appears in Fedora while it seems to be hidden in Ubuntu. Besides installing libraries there are few error messages scrolling up my monitor. Are these important errors, I have no clue. But it does install and it looks like it is using a default VESA driver. And there is no sound. Alright. I look through Fedora forums and wikis to see how to improve the installation.
By the way at this point, I am too frustrated to load a server OS and LAMP. I just want to see a fully functional desktop at this point.
Also, a difference between Ubuntu and Fedora is the terminal and having admin [root] level access. I realize that many of the command line functions do work alike but they are invoked differently. More reading. <sigh> Back to the system, I find Fedora is calling the ATI southbridge as the audio and only as HDMI. No, it should be the RealTek. And as forums point out, is somewhat normal for Fedora and RealTek. They have workarounds for this.
Okay, but I want to see first if the ATI chipset is truly the x1250 or has Gigabyte made a mistake and put in the x1200? So I go back to the ATI download page, pick up the Catalyst RPM and install away. It changes the resolution and the depth with the proprietary driver. It looks good but it still reports the x1200. Damn, I've got just a few more days before I lose the RMA window with NewEgg. I send an email to AMD and post some questions on forums. In the meantime, I try to tackle the audio. I follow the instructions for the RealTek and try the ./install command. It scrolls through the kernel build process and I notice a few errors. The build completes but it tells me there were some errors. Okay, I restart the machine, everything loads, I get to the login screen and after that it fails. It tells me the desktop has errors and it cannot start. The start and restart now have become a loop. Well, that's all that for my first installation of Fedora.
I cannot waste any more time. I need to know if the mobo is fully functional and functioning correctly. I bite the bullet and go buy a copy of Windows XP Pro 64bit.
PART III
Windoze and the Attack of the Reboots
Dejected, I go home with my copy of XP and start the installation. This was what I was trying to avoid in the first place. I wanted off the Microsoft platform. I had seen Ubuntu work great on my old Dell and I seen MythTV in use at friends' houses. I wanted to be a part of that. Instead, I'm running through the old fashion blue installation screen of Microsoft. First interesting thing. When I bought the CD, it came with two product codes. However, one of those codes did not work but the other did. Any idea as to the use of the second product code?
So after the boot up, I put in the Gigabyte driver CD. it has an automatic installation function but I see the audio drive needs a Microsoft UAD patch installed before I can install this driver. Okay, I get the patch and install it. And here comes the first of many reboots. The Gigabyte CD recognizes the patch and begins installing the seven drivers. Reboot, install some more, reboot, install. Rinse and repeat. Okay, done.
I connect the ethernet to my network and go for the Windows update. Along the way, I am constantly nagged by XP to validate my installation key, update the firewall, why no antivirus installed, etc. The updater lets me knw first off that I don't have SP2 installed. Oops. I unplug the ethernet cable immediately. I asked the guy at the store to get me the XP with SP2. Now I see a note from the package that this CD image CAN BE slipstreamed with SP2 but is not part of the CD. Dammit. So I burn a CD with SP2 for 64bit. (Which can be confusing because they keep referring to Windows Server 2003 on the same page.)
I install SP2 and...wait for it...reboot. So now I reconnect back into the network and I see more drivers. Wait, I just installed drivers from the CD (yes, I know package CDs don't always have the latest drivers) and the ones on the CD are more current than the ones on the Microsoft site. Now, I begin to figure out that SP2 has pretty much destroyed my package of driver updates.
So now I have a choice: operate as is for now and go with SageTV or GB-PVR and hope everything works? Or, do I start fresh again with: OS install + SP2 install + Windows Update + Gigabyte CD driver install + then applications?
But wait, I need to check my motherboard and the mysterious x1200 reporting. I go through the Computer Management Console and check out the motherboard profile. Well, it's telling me everything about the mobo that is supposed to be there, including x1250 as my AGP card. And my sound works, too! Well, except that I call up the realtek console and click on the Dolby Digital encoding button that supposed to turn on all the Dolby stereo profiles. I say supposed to because instead I get a BSOD. Crap. But at least I know it's working...I think.
PART IV
Reinstall or not to Reinstall?
At this point, I haven't even gotten to receiving HDTV signals or even installed the I-Mon.
It started as a Good Idea
I bought and moved into my new house in July and wanted to make it my own. I had been renting in different cities and different states for about twenty years. After unboxing and getting settled, I started in on my projects. I want, in no real order:
- replace the 1952 electric stove with a new gas stove
- add and move phone jacks in the house
- put speakers in the house for a household stereo, including wiring from the crawlspace
- look into getting gas starters for the fireplaces
- renovate the kitchen with ceiling fan, new or remodeled cabinets, cooking backsplash
- pull up the carpet in one room and redo the hardwoods
- BUILD AN HTPC
Of all the things on my list, I thought the HTPC would be the leisure item and one I could do in my spare time while watching TV.
Getting Excited
I have an old full ATX tower that wasn't being used that had gobs of room. Enough for all the fans and a real RAID. The power supply would have to go but that wasn't an issue. My intent would be to build it and put it into the Den closet and feed IR cables to the living room on the other side of the wall. I was reading up on motherboards when I came upon the Tweaktown article that touted the AMD AM2 mobo with the ATI 690G chipset (GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H). I haven't had an AMD since they first came out with the Athlon and i wasn't really interested in going back since Core2Duo was winning all the press. But after reading other reviews, like HardOCP change my mind. Here was a mobo that had all the video outs that I wanted, including HDMI, component, and DVI, but it also had enough oomph for me to watch HD video (when the time comes for me to buy that HDTV and receiver). Also, the thing that finally sold me was the price.
The motherboard, X2 5000+, and 2GB DDR2 ram would be mine for less than $350. That was it, I was sold.
The system as I hoped it to be:
- Tower ATX
- 550W Power supply
- GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H Socket AM2 AMD 690G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz, Model ADO5000DDBOX
- 2 CORSAIR XMS2 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
- SoundGraph iMON VFD, IR Remote / Black Internal VFD/IR Receiver
- SAMSUNG 18X DVD±R DVD Burner (SH-183L)
- 4 SATA 500GB Hard drives (to be in a RAID 5, file storage)
- 1 100GB EIDE Hard drive (for OS and applications)
I Should Have Read More
So...I have a power supply donated to me by a great friend to replace the puny one that a long time ago used to power the ATX's of the 1990s. I have the tower with plenty of room. I got an electrician, while wiring a new 110 outlet for my new stove, to put in a drop inside the closet. And all parts for the HTPC are in from New Egg and PC Alchemy (I-Mon IR controller). Assembly was fun and it only took one night. It would turn out to be the easiest time of the whole project. Now my headaches were just beginning.
Ubuntu Worked on My Dell, So It should Work on This New Stuff, Right?
When I played with Ubuntu on my old Dell 400sc (for an oldie but goody, look up the Hot deal featuring the 400sc), installing and configuring was a snap. Wow, the Feisty Fawn was sooo very close to being what I had always hoped for when thinking up a system for my parents to use. I'm sure you all have had to play help desk to your parents many, many times.
A friend explained to me in the easiest terms possible: Ubuntu + LAMP + MythTV = HTPC Nirvana. I bought the books (Hacks..., Understanding..., etc.) read more online, and read more online, etc. and now I was ready to go. Or not.
Ubuntu Fails
Ubuntu booted fine and even installed okay. However, the screen while 1280x1024, was 16 bpp and grainy. Well, it loaded the common VESA driver. Ok, time to change the driver. OK, it knows that it has an ATI chipset. No wait a moment, it is saying that the chipset is an X1200 and not the x1250. That won't do. If it is really the x1200 then HD and HDMI will not work because the chipset is the 690V and not the 690G. Drats. Ok, maybe it is just being read wrong. So, while Linux users simply hate restricted drivers, I'll have to break from the pack and install them anyway just so that I know the chipset is reporting right.
Let me just say right now, I have never used Linux or any of the distros before Ubuntu. I used Unix in college and at the beginning of the Internet in 1991 when I had to program my own TCP/IP stack and configure my Web server space but I felt it was something I could pick up as needed in this project. well, it is very frustrating. For example, the ATI dirver installation had to be unpackaged from RPM and repackaged as a DEB file for Ubuntu. So when it had errors on installation, I thought it may have been a mistake on my part. Time to go back to teh Intarweb and read, read, read some more.
I came upon a program called 'Envy' which began life as an Nvidia installation program that now helped people install ATI, which by the way, is considered evil, evil, evil (ATI, not Envy) because of people have a very hard time installing ATI cards. Well, it worked this time and I got the right screen depth as well as size. But wait, what happened to my sound, and now when I try to play a DVD, it is all blocky and not usable at all. Well crappola. What have I done now? Damn, nobody has any insight to this motherboard and Ubuntu. The forum folks are helpful but every fix now destroys what I had a little bit more - the DVD-ROM is no longer recognized, going back to VESA is corrupted. In all, 6 different fresh installations and nothing seems to work.
PART II
Fedora 7...Ooooh, So Close!
Okay, where was I?
All right, in all this loading and reloading of OS images on the platform (7 total for Ubuntu - 1 more because I hit enter instead of space when wanting to install LAMP and it skipped over it), my friend Jason asks me to try Fedora. Fedora is the open source product of redHat and Ubuntu is the distro of the Debian platform (which is named after the creator, Ian, and his girlfriend, Debbie. Hmm, what would it be called if his gf was named Leslie - Lesian?)
Fedora has a lot going for it. It's supported by one of the oldest Linux distributors and a lot of these folks live near me. Okay, I'll give it a try.
First off, the fedora site is very confusing. I want to get a live CD version copies but I keep getting pointed to the DVD ISO. Okay, I'll download and burn the ISO, but wait, my new DVD burner is being recognized as only CD burner in my copy of Nero 6.WTF? (By the way, I moved the burner to my old Dell 400sc machine so that I could burn ISOs, updates, and applications. Whatever I try, it won't accept the ISO image. Dambit. So I go online to find a free (as in beer) way of quickly installing a DVD burner application instead of paying for a Nero upgrade. I find one program but it also installs a toolbar on my browsers and starts revving my hard drives (I think it is conducting a search.) So I block all Internet traffic with my firewall, uninstall the toolbar, hack the Registry to prevent it reloading and reinstalling the toolbar. So there went that hour. But you know what, it did burn the ISO correctly. So now I'm off to Fedora-land.
Fedora is different from Ubuntu in that a lot of automated code appears in Fedora while it seems to be hidden in Ubuntu. Besides installing libraries there are few error messages scrolling up my monitor. Are these important errors, I have no clue. But it does install and it looks like it is using a default VESA driver. And there is no sound. Alright. I look through Fedora forums and wikis to see how to improve the installation.
By the way at this point, I am too frustrated to load a server OS and LAMP. I just want to see a fully functional desktop at this point.
Also, a difference between Ubuntu and Fedora is the terminal and having admin [root] level access. I realize that many of the command line functions do work alike but they are invoked differently. More reading. <sigh> Back to the system, I find Fedora is calling the ATI southbridge as the audio and only as HDMI. No, it should be the RealTek. And as forums point out, is somewhat normal for Fedora and RealTek. They have workarounds for this.
Okay, but I want to see first if the ATI chipset is truly the x1250 or has Gigabyte made a mistake and put in the x1200? So I go back to the ATI download page, pick up the Catalyst RPM and install away. It changes the resolution and the depth with the proprietary driver. It looks good but it still reports the x1200. Damn, I've got just a few more days before I lose the RMA window with NewEgg. I send an email to AMD and post some questions on forums. In the meantime, I try to tackle the audio. I follow the instructions for the RealTek and try the ./install command. It scrolls through the kernel build process and I notice a few errors. The build completes but it tells me there were some errors. Okay, I restart the machine, everything loads, I get to the login screen and after that it fails. It tells me the desktop has errors and it cannot start. The start and restart now have become a loop. Well, that's all that for my first installation of Fedora.
I cannot waste any more time. I need to know if the mobo is fully functional and functioning correctly. I bite the bullet and go buy a copy of Windows XP Pro 64bit.
PART III
Windoze and the Attack of the Reboots
Dejected, I go home with my copy of XP and start the installation. This was what I was trying to avoid in the first place. I wanted off the Microsoft platform. I had seen Ubuntu work great on my old Dell and I seen MythTV in use at friends' houses. I wanted to be a part of that. Instead, I'm running through the old fashion blue installation screen of Microsoft. First interesting thing. When I bought the CD, it came with two product codes. However, one of those codes did not work but the other did. Any idea as to the use of the second product code?
So after the boot up, I put in the Gigabyte driver CD. it has an automatic installation function but I see the audio drive needs a Microsoft UAD patch installed before I can install this driver. Okay, I get the patch and install it. And here comes the first of many reboots. The Gigabyte CD recognizes the patch and begins installing the seven drivers. Reboot, install some more, reboot, install. Rinse and repeat. Okay, done.
I connect the ethernet to my network and go for the Windows update. Along the way, I am constantly nagged by XP to validate my installation key, update the firewall, why no antivirus installed, etc. The updater lets me knw first off that I don't have SP2 installed. Oops. I unplug the ethernet cable immediately. I asked the guy at the store to get me the XP with SP2. Now I see a note from the package that this CD image CAN BE slipstreamed with SP2 but is not part of the CD. Dammit. So I burn a CD with SP2 for 64bit. (Which can be confusing because they keep referring to Windows Server 2003 on the same page.)
I install SP2 and...wait for it...reboot. So now I reconnect back into the network and I see more drivers. Wait, I just installed drivers from the CD (yes, I know package CDs don't always have the latest drivers) and the ones on the CD are more current than the ones on the Microsoft site. Now, I begin to figure out that SP2 has pretty much destroyed my package of driver updates.
So now I have a choice: operate as is for now and go with SageTV or GB-PVR and hope everything works? Or, do I start fresh again with: OS install + SP2 install + Windows Update + Gigabyte CD driver install + then applications?
But wait, I need to check my motherboard and the mysterious x1200 reporting. I go through the Computer Management Console and check out the motherboard profile. Well, it's telling me everything about the mobo that is supposed to be there, including x1250 as my AGP card. And my sound works, too! Well, except that I call up the realtek console and click on the Dolby Digital encoding button that supposed to turn on all the Dolby stereo profiles. I say supposed to because instead I get a BSOD. Crap. But at least I know it's working...I think.
PART IV
Reinstall or not to Reinstall?
At this point, I haven't even gotten to receiving HDTV signals or even installed the I-Mon.
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