Molten Networks

The foundation is an AsusA7V8X-X. Processor is an AMD Athlon 1Ghz, 512 MB RAM, an AGP8 ATI 128 MB video card, exact model I don’t remember. Storage is 2 250GB HD. The only display is a 17″ LCD. The card has S-Video out, but this has not been tested. TV hardware is a Hauppauge PVR150MCE. Sound comes through the onboard sound and a 5.1 PC speaker system.

Operating system is Debian. I did a net install, then ran apt-get update and apt-get upgrade to get the latest packages, just in case.

“apt-get install” and “apt-get search” are your friends. With this, install mysql, lirc, ivtv, and MythTV.

Lirc was my first big issue - the package didn’t have the MCE_USB module, so I had to grab the source and build it. Testing with irw helps you know if it’s working, at least from an IR perspective. You’ll need to work on the keypress profiles so the remote will actually do something.

Next issue was sound - arts was just killing the processor. Installed ALSA, fixed that issue, but no 5.1. Lots of rebuilding and mixer tweaking later, it’s going. The speaker-test utility is a big help troubleshooting this sort of issue, it can send a test tone to each speaker in sequence.

At this point, Myth is up and running, Interface works, remote works. Installed packages for DVD support, along with MythDVD. DVD playing works, but ripping doesn’t. Several rounds with MTD later, it would at least attempt to rip. I was trying to do ISO rips, but learned from the Myth mailing list that any read errors will cause those to fail. Perfect has worked perfectly.

This caused me to add the second 250GB HD - the first one filled up with Rips.

To-do list, no particular order:

• Test S-Video Out
• Upgrade to Myth .20
• Frontend machine for living room
• Frontend machine for bedroom
• Frontend machine for hobby room
• RAID NAS