[mythtv-users] OT: dead motherboard or video card?

[Brian Wood]

On Wednesday, June 16, 2010 03:59:48 pm Greg Woods wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-06-16 at 15:41 -0600, Greg Woods wrote:
> > I also tried removing all the PCI cards from the machine except the
> > video card; still text mode only.
> 
> OK, I have seen it all now. I have seen machines where I had to swap
> cards between slots to avoid IRQ sharing issues. I thought that was
> strange. But this is different.
> 
> I had forgotten that I removed the PVR-500 card (thanks to Comcrap, that
> card is pretty much useless now). I put it back in, so that there are
> now cards in every slot, and poof! Everything works. I have never before
> seen a machine that won't work right unless every slot is full, but
> there you go. I guess the PVR-500 isn't completely useless )-:

Wow. You;re right, we have heard it all now.

It might have something to do with the system's enumerating of resources on the PCI bus, more or less like we used to have 
to keep the same hard drive arrangement in order to get the same drive names, a problem Linux had that Solaris did not, at 
least back in the day.

You may find some BIOS option to reset all that information, but it might help or hurt.

I still find my PVRs useful for recording the SD output of STBs or satellite receivers, when my lone HD-PVR is busy, or for 
some programming that does not benefit from higher resolution.

But I had never thought if using them as "placekeepers".