[mythtv-users] xorg.conf for fx5200

[Nick Rout]

On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 10:43 AM, mike at grounded.net <mike at grounded.net>wrote:

> > A new 8400 or 9500 can be got on PCI and should be fine for you.
>
> I'm looking at various things at this point and this sounds possible also,
> thanks.
>
> > There are a lot of posts on this topic now suggesting to me there is not
> a
> > lot of searching of the list (using gossamer threads) or
> > suppliers going on.  Much of what is being asked has been recently
> > answered, for example read up on jessica's recent experiences and
> > list help.
>
> What you might not realized is that after years of archiving by search
> engines, forums, blogs, text files, etc, a LOT of information become
> unreliable over time. As I've said many times, I keep finding tons of
> information but it's never clear if it is a current, working solution. I
> would have simply given up by now had it not been for the help from this
> thread because searching leads me to countless things I could have tried and
> would have gotten nowhere. Even the folks in this thread at at odds now and
> then that something works or not. I suspect more and more people will no
> longer trust search results because of these reasons and live responses will
> become much more valuable.
>
> > I did look thru most of the posts and cannot
> > find the nodel number of the current board and it seems that it
> (probably)
> > has a good number of slots.  Quite likely it will be
> > fine, but how could anyone tell???  (guess)
>
> No one asked so I didn't think to add that. I can post that if you'd like.
> It's probably a pretty old board at this point.
>
> > Try a clean mythbuntu install with the 5200!  If you can't get that
> going,
> > I'm not sure you're going to do any better with a new
> > card.
>
> That was one of the first problems I had. I downloaded three distros and
> only the mythdora one would install on either of the systems I've tried.
> Besides, I am more familiar with RHEL/CENTOS and fedora comes closest to
> those. I wish it would install, it would be nice to see the card working
> finally. Then again, for all I know, maybe the card itself has a problem.
>
> > Just use a PCI slot / card, unlikely to need to anything else for mythtv
> > purposes.
>
> I'll take a look as I believe I have some PCI TV out cards, just not sure
> they will be of any use.
>
> >Do you want to do anything else with the
> > machines, it seems not.  In that case PCI is perfectly adequate.
>
> Anything else, as in, using it as a PC or something? No, it'll be dedicated
> to myth.
>
> > So many answers readily available to search tools.....
>
> As I've said, I have been reading, and reading, and reading and have found
> tons of information. In fact, most of the info I've found says that the
> fx5200 was/is the perfect card for myth, yet, as you've seen in this thread,
> haven't worked for me.
>
> > How good will it be when you do get a picture working???
>
> Once I get a machine up, running, get a little hands on time with myth,
> then, I'll be happy to invest more into it. Right now, I've already spent a
> bunch of money, don't have a box with TV out yet so need more hands on
> experience in using it to know how much I'll spend.
>

I am not sure why your fx5200 does not work. The advice that it was an ideal
card is now somewhat dated by a number of factors:

1. it is now not supported in the main nvidia driver branch, you need to use
the legacy drivers, which doesn't seem to be the easiest to do on your
distro,

2. the technology is old now. It has been supplanted by far superior cards
which will do everything a fx5200 could do (accelerate mpeg2) and more
(accelerate mpeg2, h264 and divx/xvid, superior deinterlacing, feed modern
hdmi equipment, and more).

3. The growth of h264, both as a broadcast standard and a medium for ripped
media, makes the mpeg2 only capabilities of the fx5200 even more redundant.

4. in short the 5200 and it's ilk certainly were the best cards at a certain
point in time and for certain uses (mainly mpeg2 HD broadcasts, ie mainly in
the US).

The problems for someone like you is that

(a) there are no vdpau agp cards; and

(b) once you get a decent card and a motherboard to fit it, you possibly
won't have any analogue out options, you'll have VGA, HDMI or DVI out.
Composite or component or s-video is stil available on some cards, but they
are disappearing rapidly.
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