Mailing List Archive: Shuttle SK41G TV out/Xv problems

Shuttle SK41G TV out/Xv problems

Apr 1, 2003, 9:47 AM

Post #1 of 3 (2228 views)

Well, I just got an Shuttle SK41G (note to previous poster: not SK41G2
- this one is a completely different chipset). First off, noise: it is
not noisy. It is very quiet. It has a variable speed processor fan that
can vary from very quiet to blow-dryer loud. The only reason I know it
varies to blow-dryer is because it does that briefly during the reboot
sequence. I did get the SK41G instead of the SK41G2 because I believe I
read that the G2 has a chipset fan (thus making 3 fans: a Powersupply
fan, a CPU/case fan, and chipset fan) instead of only 2. Also it was
cheaper. :)

Except for a cripping problem I haven't resolved yet (see below) the
setup went fine. Sound (ALSA), network, usb, X, WinTV card all worked.

I hit a minor snag on the way, but after searching the net for a bit
found the answer: Linux 2.4.18-2.4.20 (at least) won't boot at all
unless you turn on the "USB Mouse Support" option in the BIOS or have a
PS/2 mouse plugged in. Don't know why, but it's an easy fix.

Here's the big problem:
I can't get XVideo and the TVout to work. XVideo works on a VGA
monitor. TVout works with X. But, when using TVOut, all XVideo displays
simply show a black screen. It doesn't crash - it appears to be working
quite normally, but simply doesn't display anything. This is evidenced
by both "mplayer -vo xv file" and trying to watch a prerecorded video
in mythfrontend. BUT mythfronted does play the mini-preview of the
previously recorded recordings..does that not use Xv?

Something else that I think might help: if the X server is set to use
ANY bit depth besides 24bpp, TVOut displays a black screen. VGA works
fine at other bit depths

So, my guess right now is that Xv is changing the bit depth for some
reason, causing the TVout circuitry to not display anything since it
only supports 24bpp. Is there any way to force Xv to use 24bpp mode?
Has anyone gotten one of these boxes to work?

Hardware/software info:
Shuttle SK41G
Video Card: shuttle built-in: ProSavageDDR P4M266
XF86 4.3
Debian unstable
Linux 2.4.20 (debian kernel)
MythTV CVS

ALSO, I can't right now even use mythtv *without* Xv, because mythtv
only supports 16-bit and 32-bit non-Xv mode. I should think that adding
support for 24bpp w/32bit pixmaps would be easy since you can still use
the same 32-bit pixmap-filling code, but I tried and just got a messed
up display. :)

Thanks,
James

Re: Shuttle SK41G TV out/Xv problems [ In reply to ]

msherman at dsbox

Apr 1, 2003, 2:29 PM

Post #2 of 3 (2188 views)

Permalink

I have the Shuttle SS40G and MythTV works fine with TVOut. I think
it's the same video card as your SK41G. Did you compile the newer sis
driver for X? Did you set some sis-specific options in the XF86Config
file? See some of my notes here:

http://www.stealthboy.com/pvr_howto.html

--
Michael J. Sherman | Software Developer | Digital Sandbox, Inc.
"There are 10 types of people in the world - those who know binary and
those who don't"

Re: Shuttle SK41G TV out/Xv problems [ In reply to ]

foom at fuhm

Apr 2, 2003, 11:10 AM

Post #3 of 3 (2157 views)

Permalink

Well I finally got everything to work with the SK41G's ProSavageDDR
K4M266 video card now..if anyone else reading the archive in the future
is having trouble getting the hardware setup, drop me an email. :)

I'm pretty happy with the box at this point, it's quiet and pretty
small and works. Now I have only a minor issue left, which is that the
tv output isn't doing overscan. Modelines don't do anything AFAICT,
probably because the driver is using BIOS mode changing calls. I've
asked the X driver author about this, hopefully he'll have some ideas.

For anyone planning on building a mythbox, here's what I have:

Hardware:
Shuttle SK41G
Athlon 1800+
WinTV dbx model 401
Maxtor 120GB 5400RPM FDB drive (4R120L0)

Software:
Debian unstable
ALSA 0.9.0rc7
kernel 2.4.20-k7
XFree86 4.3 (from deb
ftp://ftp.cs.umn.edu/pub/debian-misc/daniels/current/sid/i386 ./)
MythTV CVS head

I'm running the CPU at full speed, and even when encoding Live TV at
640x480 the fan doesn't seem to speed up past the slowest, quiet speed.

On Tuesday, April 1, 2003, at 11:47 AM, James Knight wrote:
> Here's the big problem:
> I can't get XVideo and the TVout to work. XVideo works on a VGA
> monitor. TVout works with X. But, when using TVOut, all XVideo
> displays simply show a black screen. It doesn't crash - it appears to
> be working quite normally, but simply doesn't display anything. This
> is evidenced by both "mplayer -vo xv file" and trying to watch a
> prerecorded video in mythfrontend. BUT mythfronted does play the
> mini-preview of the previously recorded recordings..does that not use
> Xv?

So, to answer my own questions: 1) the mini-preview does NOT use Xv.

2) Apparently the output can be "half-set" to TVout. I found that I
needed to make sure that X was using the BIOS to switch modes (this is
default), and I had to have run s3switch TV once (but now it appears to
work without that). Using s3switch was a bit of a problem since the
distributed source doesn't work right.

To make s3switch work I had to apply this patch that I got from the
author, as the video BIOS is apparently writing to an unexpected IO
port:

--- s3switch.c~ 2002-09-11 18:25:33.000000000 -0400
+++ s3switch.c 2003-04-01 21:22:35.000000000 -0500
@@ -101,6 +101,7 @@ IOAccess( int enable )
ioperm( 0x61, 1, enable );
ioperm( 0x80, 1, enable );
ioperm( 0x3b0, 0x30, enable );
+ ioperm( 0xeb, 1, enable );
}

James