ATI All-in-Wonder HowTo

For the German version, please check ATI All-in-Wonder HowTo (German).

Introduction

The ATI All-in-Wonder Pro cards are notorious for the bad driver support under Linux. An advantage is that especially in HTPCs they use little space for a lot of functionality. Luckily there is a partial solution. The goal is just to be able to watch tv with tvtime. Recording through MythTV is currently NOT possible.

At http://www.rulerofearth.com/ you can obtain the source code for a kernel module by Eric Sellers, that makes it possible to easily access the recording function of the AIW.

SuSE 9.2

Install the kernel-source packet on top of the regular kernel. Change directory to /usr/src/linux. There execute the command make cloneconfig. This prepares the source code.

Mach64 video4linux2 module

Download this from http://www.rulerofearth.com/ and unpack it. In the new v412 directory execute the command make KDIR=/usr/src/linux. When no errors are reported, laod the new module with insmod ./genericv41.ko. With dmesg you can check to see if everything loaded correctly.

Modify MythTV

In the install directory of MythTV, either /usr/share/mythtv or /usr/local/share/mythtv (depending on the distribution), you only have to edit the file mainmenu.xml. You can simply add a new entry. The code looks like this:

   <button>
      <type>TV_PLAYBACK</type>
      <text>Direct Mode</text>
      <text lang="PT">Modo Directo de TV</text>
      <text lang="ES">TV directo</text>
      <text lang="CA">TV directe</text>
      <text lang="DE">TV direkt</text>
      <text lang="SV">TV direkt</text>
     <!-- <action>EXEC xawtv -f -device /dev/video1 -dspdev /dev/mixer:cdrom -vbidev /dev/dbi1 </action> -->
      <action>EXEC tvtime -d /dev/video1 -x /dev/mixer:cd</action>
   </button>

Here is assumed that you'd have to have a second TV card to record. The AIW is therefore used as 2 cards just for viewing. When you use the code commented out by <!--, you will use xawtv instead of tvtime. EXECTV can be used instead of EXEC, this will however block the TV viewing when at the time of the call the first TV card is recording.