[mythtv-users] Foxconn A7GM-S

[John Finlay]

John Meissen wrote:
> Anyone have any success/failures/opinions about the Foxconn A7GM-S 
> MicroATX AMD motherboard?  http://tinyurl.com/5cu8wc
>
> It looks like a nice choice for a MythTV box, and NewEgg has them for 
> what looks like a decent price.
>
>   
I just purchased this board to use for my backend server because it has 
6 SATA connectors. I installed both Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 9 64 bit 
versions to see which one I liked better. I also tried to install the 
fglrx driver for the video and to get a mythfrontend going.

In general seems like a good MB for a reasonable price.

Ubuntu installed easily and it has a mechanism to install the fglrx (and 
nvidia) drivers easily. Mythtv was easy to install. I initally set up 
the frontend to run in a window at a size that would fit my display. 
That worked well for displaying the gui but playback of HD seemed to use 
a lot of cpu and the playback was not smooth. Trying various profiles 
didn't seem to helpp but since I wasn't planning to use it for playback 
I didn't care. I then reset it to notplay in a window and set the size 
back to (0,0) which then caused the display to hash when mythfrontend 
started up - it seems that there is a problem with the driver when the 
native size is used. Anyway I'm not able to get mythfrontend working 
anymore. Haven't used much other than firefox so I can't comment on 
stability, etc.

Fedora seemed to install easily but when the display started after 
installation it was put into some weird mode that was based on frequency 
- this made the display window a lot larger than the native resolution. 
I was able to change the resolution and that seemd to fix the problem. 
This was using the radeon driver. I tried to figure out how to istall 
fglrx but it doesn't seem to be available for Fedora9. I got a 
mythfrontend working but it seems to have some weirdness ana won't cover 
the screen. Playback was really poor so I've abandoned that effort. 
Generally Fedora 9 seems OK but more finicky than Ubuntu and much harder 
to get media stuff installed - finally just gave up.

I liked the fit and finish of the board and it looks like the quality is 
better than other boards in this price range - I've got ECS and Biostar 
(avoid ECS) boards. I like the Biostar as well but the board models 
change so fast that it's almost impossible to recommend a board since 
they seem to go out of production in a few months.

I'd recommend this one for BE use but not for FE unless you put a 
Nividia card in at least until better drivers are available.

John