[mythtv-users] Foxconn NVIDIA ION system and 2G ram stick at newegg

[Greg Oliver]

On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 8:43 PM, Matt White <whitem at arts.usask.ca> wrote:
> On 10-08-20 3:54 PM, Ozzy Lash wrote:
> Bad.  I bought one, and have had nothing but problems (if anyone has one
> working, let me know).  It works fine as a general computer, but as soon as
> you try VDPAU with mythtv, it locks up (complete hard lock, requiring power
> cycle) after a few ffwd/rewinds.
>
> I've got a Zotac IONITX board that I'm extremely happy with, but thought
> this was a nice case and design.  It is capable of netboot, but the lockups
> basically render it useless for myth.
>
> I initially tried with 2 GB.  They're not interested in releasing a bios
> that allows you to set the allocated vram - when I asked their technical
> support about it, they replied that they couldn't get it to work and it
> crashed a lot.  Not really inspiring confidence, there.  There is definitely
> something wrong - the BIOS reports 256 MB, /proc/mtrr shows 256 MB, but the
> NVidia driver shows that it's detected 512 MB (and of course you can't
> override it).  So, I went and purchased a 4 GB sodimm (about the same price
> I initially paid for the barebones system) so I could use 512 MB of video
> ram.  Same thing happens - at least the memory allocation reported is
> consistent across BIOS, /proc/mtrr, and the NVidia logs.  Even if it did
> work, 4 GB for a mythtv machine is pretty excessive - I would have been very
> happy with the 2 GB if I could do the 1.5 GB/512 MB split.
>
> Speaking of technical support, that was the last I've heard from them - I've
> mailed back twice more in the past week with no response whatsoever.  The
> website is hit-and-miss, and I've never been able to access their forums at
> all.
>
> Last Foxconn product I'll ever buy...As I said, I've had nothing but good
> experiences with the Zotac IONITX boards (bare motherboards), and I know
> that a lot of folks here are quite happy with the Acer AspireRevo.  Plenty
> of other machines out there to avoid a lemon like this piece of crap.

I did not have any issues with it running vdpau like you suggested.  I
originally bought it to speed up access to my 10TB sata array, but it
did not help that much, so I just bought a full blown cpu...  rsync
over ssh just nails the cpu at gigabit speeds on the atoms..  not too
handy for backing up home machines, etc....

Unfortunately, I cannot (well I guess I can) see using 4GB in one, so
Im not..  Other than that, here's a link to foxconn's response to my
identical question..

http://service.foxconnchannel.com/econtact/online/onlineFeedback.init.do?selectCaseId=6ECD88B20A86825D0029DBB83FF97187

It pretty much states the same thing you said...  They could not make
it work reliably..

-Greg