[mythtv-users] VIA EPIA Motherboards

[Douglas Bates]

Stuart Felenstein <stuart4m at yahoo.com> writes:

> I purches the M1000 right before the LVD came out.  I'm not sure but
> I think the LVDS01 is an upgrade on the LAN.  I could be wrong on
> that issue.
> 
> The price looks good, though it's been a few weeks for me.  I
> purchased at Logicsupply and paid 170. 
> 
> For information on Epia and Epia PVR / HTPC I'd spend some time
> looking around viaarena.com and epiacenter.com .
> 
> BIGFATWARNING:Via has failed miserably to deliver drivers for the
> onboard CLE266 video chip.
> 
> To date: Windows is non existent if you want such things as hardware
> acceleration and decoding for watching DVD's.
> 
> Linux - over the last few months Via has made some effort
> and greater effort has been made by various Linux hackers (most of
> whom you will see at viaarena).  So for Linux there has been some
> improvement.  It is a bit of work (at least for me) getting those
> drivers installed and working properly.  There are drivers from Via,
> for the main distros but built against those distros very specific
> kernels.  Outside of that option, there are patches for kernel .23.

I only use Linux so having better Linux support than Windows support
is not a problem.  I have recently been wrestling with installation of
drivers for the Nforce2 chipset under the 2.6.0-test11 kernel plus
trying to get audio from a WinFast 2000 XP capture card so building
and patching kernels is a familiar exercise.

> Sorry if I provided too much extraneous information.

Not at all.  Too much information is definitely better than too little
in what is a new area for me.  Thanks for the pointers to the lists.

I found this HowTo for installing and tuning Linux on the EPIA
motherboards

                 http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=378

to be quite helpful.