User:Grafxman
Hello all HTPC builders out there, I am GrafXMan!
XBMC Rocks!
I have been trying to get a HTPC up and going for a while now, this was actually before I even found out about XBMC, but now that I have... sweet!
I will be including some of the things I had to work on to get XBMC to work with my hardware, so hopefully you won't experience the same start up issues I had. There will be configuration files and other hardware specific information here.
My Hardware/Setup Info
- The Box: Old Dell WHL dual Xeon Workstation (don't laugh... it was a freebie!!!)
- Soundcard: Creative SoundBlaster Live 5.1 Platinum w/LiveDrive
- Remote: LiveDrive Receiver with RM-900 Remote
- Video Card: NVidia 4x AGP GeForce 6200
- OS: Kubuntu - Karmic (You'd better believe its Linux!!! This is a real system!)
- Media Stores: All media is stored on a NFS Server over 100Mbps.
Drawbacks so far:
Unfortunately the Freebie didn't come with two Xeon CPU's, which sucks big time, because they are quite expensive! Though it still works great, that is once you get the right video driver for GLX in place for the NVidia card. KDE 4+ crawls without the right vid driver, but it is a good way to make sure that all the OpenGL video setup is good without fighting strange problems in XBMC (it won't even start without the Xorg GLX extension turned on).
The next drawback is the Composite TV out on this card does not work no matter what you do, but you can plug it into a nice LCD TV, because besides that the card works great!
One other problem was the LiveDrive Remote setup and Lirc. It can be done, just don't expect to find a whole lot of help with the RM-900 remote setup out there online. Well, that is except for here! ;-)
That's pretty much it on the drawbacks! Woo-Raeh!