My final build

[r1chard]

Oh, I forgot to mention there was a pretty major issue when I first powered the system up.

In the photos you can see two drives. One is the 750GB Samsung I bought for the system. The other is a 200GB WD Caviar that has been in a USB external drive case, and has most our DVD collection rips on it.

I figured for convenience I'd plug the WD into the case as well.

Bad move, for two reasons:

1. The WD is bloody noisy! It was the noisiest component in the system by far. I could hear it easily a meter away. Without it I can't hear the system at all from that far.
2. The Samsung is SATA-2 and I configured it to run at 3GB/s. The WD is not. This cause the system to have serious problems during POST and drive detection. Removing the WD made it boot up just peachy.

Some other notes:

1. The BIOS wanted me to turn on AHCI. I didn't know what that was, but it seemed insistent so I turned it on anyway. I've since learned that it's a Good Thing
2. I can't see the POST message screen at all. On boot I see an AHCI screen and then the tail of the devices listing while it loads up a boot device. No memory / disk / BIOS version screen for me! There's no "slow POST" option in the BIOS either.

[r1chard]

To get the sound to come out of the optical S/PDIF connection I had to fire up alsamixer and unmute the IEC958 option.

[mrcurly]

The problem i had with my Fusion Max (i know it may be a slightly different case..) was that the manual outlined connecting the cable to the front panel to enable the remote power switch. I had the same issue as you - the cable that appears to be the one is actually too short to get around the drive cradle to the front panel pins.

After looking closer at the inside of the front panel i found that there was already a cable connected to those pins, its fairly difficult to see as it has a plastic shroud around it, the other cable (i believe) is the override if you want to plug power on/off control into a power switch on your motherboard.

I gave it a try without it connected and everything is fully functional from the remote, power up/down etc.

Probably a few differences with our systems, i would perservere with that though, it should be able to work - good luck!

Cheers
MrC

[mrcurly]

BTW - if you want to offload the junk off your 200GB drive i can thoroughly recommend the 1tb Samsung unit, its as quiet as a mouse.. The only sound out of my box is a very faint fan whir, and you need to be practically sitting on top of it to hear that.

[StarTV]

Mrcurly, do you have issues with losing sound over HDMI to your plasma?

And I also agree that the samsung HDD's are very quite.

R1chard, I'm glad your building this system because this may well be the OS that I try in the future. We also have very similar hardware.

Just curious; what's the temp of your CPU at idle?

[mrcurly]

Probably used the HTPC for about 75 hours by now - have never had any problem with losing sound over HDMI with this system.

If you have an LX508 you will find the hoppy tuner to be a major improvement. I was getting some slight picture distortion at the edges of the screen (bit like slight barrel distortion evident on shows like Top Gear) with the internal tuner - its no longer a problem with the media centre tuner.

[mrcurly]

Just noticed you have a Pana, if you have been having problems its not a product of the mboard - unless yours is buggy, more likely to be the drivers.

From memory the realtek drivers needed updating on my machine (completed during the build, not due to any audio issue), would pay to check on the Realtek site to ensure your release is current.

[scottb721]

Richard,
What ATI drivers and settings are you using ?
I've got real bad interlace/deinterlace/combing issues. Sports are impossible to watch.

Thanks

[StarTV]

Originally Posted by mrcurly

Just noticed you have a Pana, if you have been having problems its not a product of the mboard - unless yours is buggy, more likely to be the drivers.

From memory the realtek drivers needed updating on my machine (completed during the build, not due to any audio issue), would pay to check on the Realtek site to ensure your release is current.

Firstly, sorry R1chard for the thread hijack, but I'm really keen on clearing this audio issue with the on board graphics.

mrcurly, I'm using the latest ATI CCC 8.11 drivers and the 'ATI HDMI Audio Device' driver. Could you please tell what drivers you are using and the settings. It may be a problem with compatability betwen the panasonic and the graphics card which would be a shame.

[r1chard]

Originally Posted by scottb721

Richard,
What ATI drivers and settings are you using ?
I've got real bad interlace/deinterlace/combing issues. Sports are impossible to watch.

I have the driver from ubuntu 8.10 installed - the Catalyst control center says "8.54.3" - no idea how that relates to the 8.11 currently on the ATI website

I'm watching TV using kaffeine with the xine backend. The xine backend is set to use the "xv" video driver. I did try opengl but that caused serious problems including X11 crashing.

What are you watching TV with?

Make sure you've got deinterlacing turned on. Sometimes it's not configured on. In the kaffeine / xine version I have the default is "onefield" deinterlacing, but I seem to recall that in ubuntu 7.x the default was no deinterlacing.


Edit: I take it back. It's gone dodgy again. Lots of visual corruption

[scottb721]

Sorry, I forgot you were using linux again.

I did a fresh install this arvo and it's looking good again. Fast scrolling credits were actually legible.
There is still a bit of analogue look on some shows though. May be the source hopefully.

[mrcurly]

StarTV - Will check the HDMI driver versions for you tomorrow, have had no power for a couple of days. Thats Queensland.. beautiful one day, dark the next.