Asus M2NPV-VM
Features
This board seems like a great candidate for an HD frontend. It fits the micro atx form factor, has an integrated "HD" audio chipset (Intel's successor to the ubiquotous 8x0 found on many older nForce boards), has VGA, DVI, component, composite and S-Video out and uses AMD's AM2 socket.
The board is based on the NVIDIA GeForce 6150 GPU and NVIDIA nForce 430 MCP. This GPU uses a shared memory architecture.
Issues
Many users have reported that the stock 0303 BIOS version is buggy. Asus does have a BIOS update available, but this does not seem to address all the issues (which included APIC bugs and IRQ conflicts when enabling all onboard peripherals).
While the latest ALSA drivers go a long way in improving hda-intel support, getting this working is still quirky at best. See this forum post for details: [1].
Another sound issue with this board is that while the motherboard does have a header for S/PDIF output, Asus does not include the digital out module which is available as ASUS part number C1B61P. There is a simple S/PDIF TTL to COAX circuit which works perfectly with this board here: [2].
Suspend to RAM (S3) Issues
If you Mythbox wakes up right after suspending and there are no error messages in /var/log/syslog and /var/log/messages, USB modules might be the reason. Unload the USB modules before suspending (ehci_hcd, uhci_hcd, usbhid). Firewire might also make problems (ohci1394, ieee1394).
I followed these steps:
- kill lircd and irexec and unload lirc modules (LIRC modules are not suspendable)
- unload firewire and usb modules or your mythbox will wake up from suspend right after suspending
- write temp data to disks by running "sync"
- run suspend command: "echo mem >/sys/power/state"
After suspending, run the above commands in the reverse order:
- load usb modules
- load lirc modules and start lircd
Suspend script might look like this:
## stop lircd if you use it #/etc/rc.d/rc.lircd stop ## this kills lircd and unload modules #killall irexec >/dev/null 2>&1 ## unload usb and firewire modules rmmod ohci1394 ieee1394 ehci_hcd ohci_hcd usbhid ## set wakeup time for mythbox if you want your mythbox to wake up #/home/mythtv/wakeuptime --set ## sync the disks sync ## standby mode: S3 echo mem >/sys/power/state ########################################## ## this will be started after waking up ## ########################################## ## wait a little bit for everything to wake up sleep 1 ## modprobe firewire and usb modules modprobe ohci1394 modprobe ieee1394 modprobe ehci_hcd modprobe ohci_hcd modprobe usbhid ## start lircd if you stopped it above #/etc/rc.d/rc.lircd start
Don't forget: if you stop/start LIRC, you will have to restart mythfrontend.