[mythtv-users] nForce2 motherboards

[Jarod C. Wilson]

Gotta love 'em. While many folks may recall, I said I was going to 
replace my MythTV system's board with an Asus A7N8X-VM. Minor change of 
plan. The Asus board doesn't have the necessary holes for mounting my 
cpu cooler. I settled on plan B, the Chaintech Summit 7NIF2. This is a 
micro-ATX nForce2 board, and let me just say that so far, I love it.

Just a few points where this board is superior to the Asus:

1) Price -- The Chaintech board is a few dollars less, though Asus has 
a far better name.

2) S-Video out -- the Asus board requires a $15+ add-on bracket for 
S-Video out, the Chaintech board has it on-board (though I'm using 
VGA->Component Video).

3) Memory slots -- the Asus has only 2, the Chaintech has 3.

It took me about an hour and a half to shutdown, take apart my system, 
swap in the new board, put the system back together, reboot a few times 
and get all the correct drivers in place, and get the system back into 
production.

I downloaded the nforce2 driver .src.rpm from nVidia's web site before 
swapping boards, so it was already there when I started my system up on 
the new board. Compile and install, and all the drivers (including the 
NIC) are in place. Didn't have to reinstall a thing (though it did take 
some time to go through kudzu adding and removing components).

Also, this board seems to have much better hard drive performance than 
my prior board, an MSI KM2M Combo-L had. The only complaint I have is 
that they didn't include a bracket for S/PDIF out. Oh well, I just 
moved my Audigy over from the old board. No more need for an AGP card 
though.

In short, a very nice motherboard for a build-your-own MythTV system, 
especially with the on-board TV-Out. I'll be putting it through further 
torture tests this weekend, but it was flawless recording and playing 
back this evening.

--Jarod

-- 
Jarod C. Wilson, RHCE

Got a question? Read this first...
     http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
MythTV, Red Hat Linux 9 & ATrpms documentation:
     http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-page.php?pageName=rh9pvr250
MythTV Searchable Mailing List Archive
     http://www.gossamer-threads.com/archive/MythTV_C2/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20031017/e3b590f3/attachment.pgp