Difference between revisions of "VIA SP13000"

Revision as of 14:21, 18 October 2009

Installing Myth on SP13000

The SP13000 is a relatively low-power motherboard that can be run fanless when using a case such as a Tranquil T2e heatsink case.

To playback a/v media the system offloads Mpeg2 decoding to the graphics processor using the XvMC architecture in Linux. XvMC was broken in a few generations of linux and is fixed in 2.6.30 kernel and later.

VIA EPIA SP Specifications

Processor - VIA C3™/ VIA Eden™ EBGA processor

Chipset - VIA CN400 North Bridge - VIA VT8237 South Bridge

System Memory - 1 DDR266/333/400 DIMM socket - Up to 1GB memory size

VGA - Integrated VIA UniChrome™Pro AGP graphics with MPEG-2 decoder /MPEG-4 Accelerator

Expansion Slots - 1 PCI Onboard IDE - 2 X UltraDMA 133/100 Connector Onboard Serial ATA - 2 SATA Connectors Onboard LAN - VIA VT6103 10/100 Base-T Ethernet PHY Onboard Audio - VIA VT1617A 6channel AC' 97 codec Onboard TV Out - VIA VT1623 TV Encoder Onboard 1394 - VIA VT6307S IEEE 1394 Firewire

Back Panel I/O - 1 PS2 mouse port - 1 PS2 keyboard port - 1 RJ-45 LAN port - 1 Serial port - 2 USB 2.0 ports - 1 VGA port - 1 PCA port (SPDIF or TV out) - 1 S-video port - 3 Audio jacks: line-out, line-in and mic-in (Horizontal, Smart 5.1 Support)

Onboard I/O Connectors - 3 USB connector for 6additional USB 2.0 ports - 1 1394 connector for 1 1394 port - 1 Serial port connector for a second com port - 1 VIP connector - 1 Front-panel audio connector (Mic-in and Line-out) - 1 CD audio-in connector - 1 FIR connector - 1 CIR connector (Switchable for KB/MS) - 1 LPT port connector - 1 Wake-on-LAN connector - 2 Fan connectors: CPU/Sys FAN - 1 I2C connector - 1 LVDS/TTL module connector (Optional) - 1 +12V power connector - ATX power connector

BIOS - Award BIOS - 4/8Mbit flash memory

System Monitoring & Management - CPU voltage monitoring - Wake-on-LAN, Keyboard Power-on, Timer Power-on - System power management - AC power failure recovery

Form Factor - Mini-ITX (6 layer) - 17 cm x 17 cm

This is a rough installation instructions proven to work to get a MythFrontend running on an SP13000 (and possibly other Via CN400 based boards)

Hope this is of help - I will tidy this post up at some point.

I installed Karmic Xubuntu Alpha6 on a 4gb usb stick from the live CD (i used a standard Xubuntu Karmic installation and partition layout). Once installed I removed apps that were irrelevant for this systems purpose or administration; openoffice, gimp etc.

install nano text editor - so much easier to learn than vim sudo apt-get install nano install and enable SSH and VNC servers for administration if desired

configure xrandr to run on startup to resize to 1440x900 sudo nano etc/gdm/Init/Default

add at the top of the file: xrandr --output default --mode 1440x900

1440x900 was selected as this res was available in the display options of XFCE and has the x to y resolution ratio of 1.6; the same as the monitor connected to the system and the max output of the graphics cards is 1600x1200. There is no point setting it too high for 2 further reasons: 1) Standard Def tv is only 576 pixels high. 2) XvMC only supports upto a certain resolution (I understand)

turn off unwanted services - laptop-mode, ondemand, cups, saned,bluetooth... to remove conservative cpu scaling, printing scanning and other unwanted services - use: sudo rcconf

XFCE OSD for volume causes stuttering; turn off OSD - one of these may work

 Go to Settings --> Session and startup Application Autostart tab and uncheck xfce4-tips

OR

 remove notify-osd

I had to update the /etc/X11/XvMCConfig file to libXvMCVIAPro.so.1 (for the SP13000 MB). add the myth user into the mythtv group. restartX/reboot

install mythtv-frontend from files using dpkg -i <package>

install neon-wide and projectgreyhem-OSD themes install mythVideo and MythMusic

setup network drive mount fstab network drives onto lib/var/mythtv

$ /etc/fstab //192.168.0.2/store /var/lib/mythtv cifs rw,username=<username>,password=<password> 0 0

OSD Stutters Playback The fading of the OSD caused playback to pause temporarily. To get aroung this, I disabled fading by editing the theme and setting the fade duration to 0. I'm using the ProjectGreyhem-OSD theme, so I edited /usr/share/mythtv/themes/project-greyhem-OSD/osd.xml and changed the following line: <fadeaway>30</fadeaway> to <fadeaway>0</fadeaway>

Tinny Sound I got tinny sound when watching recording in MythTV. This was fixed by setting an option in the sound driver: sudo -s -H echo "options snd_via82xx dxs_support=2" >> /etc/modprobe.d/sound

edit /etc/default/grub - see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1195275 and http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2595626

sudo nano /etc/default/grub change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi=force"

this forces software control of the power supply among other things.

add the myth user into the mythtv group. restartX/reboot

The system runs Myth at 1440x900 with BBC2 (high bitrate SD DVB-T uk transmission) playing with Myth using 25-35% cpu.

See Also

Manufacturers Page: Via EN Series Mini-ITX Mainboards