[mythtv-users] Matrox Millennium G400 MAX

[Brian Wood]

On Monday, October 04, 2010 01:20:12 pm Nicolas Will wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-10-04 at 13:05 -0600, Brian Wood wrote:
> > The 5200 will probably require the legacy driver, but should work, you
> > should even be able to get XVmC to work for MPEG2
> > stuff.
> 
> Careful with legacy NVIDIA drivers.
> 
> The trouble is that the upcoming cycle of common distros will have X
> server 1.9. NVIDIA has the mainline driver adapted to the new ABI, but
> not the legacy versions. So the proprietary legacy drivers won't work.
> NVIDIA has clearly announced that porting the legacy stuff is low on
> their priority list.
> 
> I am reverting an old laptop from Maverick to Lucid for this reason.
> 
> Yes, old hardware gets stale support... Another dead horse, maybe...

Usually the support from the mainstream makers goes stale, followed by a period when nobody wants the hardware.

Then, after a delay, some "specialists" take over, and come up with some specific distros for the "orphan" hardware, 
usually about the time that the cost for such H/W hits about zero.

This is true for old Apple stuff, I have even found some distros for my old pre-Intel Cobalt machines (original RAQ, 
original Qube and the Qube 2). The NSLU2s are another example.

There is even a reasonably active Sparc port of Debian, it's been updated many times this year. Those old machines were 
great, built like tanks (in the USA), and very well-engineered.

Older SGI gear is also well-supported, and can be picked up cheaply. Only now are people realizing the advantages of the 
MIPS architecture.

But most of this stuff is not capable of running Myth, and so is not relevant here, but can be used for a lot of other 
purposes.