Mailing List Archive

HD, AverTV, & WinTV 250 sale
This Sunday morning's flyer from CompUSA in the San Jose, CA Mercury newspaper
has these interesting items on sale (all prices AFTER REBATES):

160 GB 7200 RPM with 8MB Cache "generic" Hard drive, item #300018 for $99.99

AverTV Stereo TV Tuner, item #292417 for $19.99 (web site says sold out)

WinTV PVR250, item #292415, for $99.99

Sale lasts through 5/31.

Just checked and all items and rebates are listed on compusa.com.

Enjoy,
Vince
Re: HD, AverTV, & WinTV 250 sale [ In reply to ]
Just to let people know the AverTV cards are out of stock for mail
order, but they can be in stock in your local store. I just picked mine
up and they had 2 more on the shelf inBoise Idaho.

Kim

>This Sunday morning's flyer from CompUSA in the San Jose, CA Mercury newspaper
>has these interesting items on sale (all prices AFTER REBATES):
>
>160 GB 7200 RPM with 8MB Cache "generic" Hard drive, item #300018 for $99.99
>
>AverTV Stereo TV Tuner, item #292417 for $19.99 (web site says sold out)
>
>WinTV PVR250, item #292415, for $99.99
>
>Sale lasts through 5/31.
>
>Just checked and all items and rebates are listed on compusa.com.
>
>Enjoy,
>Vince
>
>
>
RE: HD, AverTV, & WinTV 250 sale [ In reply to ]
>
> 160 GB 7200 RPM with 8MB Cache "generic" Hard drive, item #300018 for $99.99
(after rebates)
>

Went to my local CompUSA and the hard drive they had for me was a Maxtor
DiamondMax Plus 9.
RE: HD, AverTV, & WinTV 250 sale [ In reply to ]
Couple of point I found out the hard way.

1. 160GB disk NOT supported by my BIOS (137GB max supported) and Maxtor does
not provide Linux support. So I'm jumping through hoops to get the drive to
work, even using only 137GB of the drive. (Still working on this.)

2. The Aver TV card I got has the Conexant chip (Fusion 878A), which (if I
recall correctly) previous posts and the MythTV install guide say is not well
supported under Linux.
Re: RE: HD, AverTV, & WinTV 250 sale [ In reply to ]
On Mon, 2003-05-26 at 12:56, Vince Busam wrote:
> Couple of point I found out the hard way.
>
> 1. 160GB disk NOT supported by my BIOS (137GB max supported) and Maxtor does
> not provide Linux support. So I'm jumping through hoops to get the drive to
> work, even using only 137GB of the drive. (Still working on this.)

Yeah... but Linux usually ignores the BIOS anyway when it comes to hard
drive detection. Have you turned off LBA in your boot config? What do
fdisk and dmesg report?

-Ian

--
__________________________________
Ian Forde, RHCE, CCSE, SCNA, SCDME
CYTBeN, Inc.
ian@duckland.org / ian@cytben.com
Re: RE: HD, AverTV, & WinTV 250 sale [ In reply to ]
At 12:56 PM 5/26/2003 -0700, Vince Busam wrote:
>Couple of point I found out the hard way.
>
>1. 160GB disk NOT supported by my BIOS (137GB max supported) and Maxtor does
>not provide Linux support. So I'm jumping through hoops to get the drive to
>work, even using only 137GB of the drive. (Still working on this.)

What is the nature of your problem? The Linux kernel does not rely on BIOS
support of large drives. I run a couple of 180GBs here and a 250GB,
including at least one Maxtor, with no problems; even though my BIOS
doesn't see these drives properly, Linux sees them just fine at their full
sizes. (You do need an up-to-date version of fdisk to partition them
properly, though.)

You have to jump through hoops with Windows and these drives ... the
Maxtors I've bought came with special IDE-pci cards and Windows-specific
patch disks ... but for once Linux is ahead of the curve.

Getting these drive to boot the kernel properly may be tricky, though ... I
haven't tried that yet ... my hda drives are all still "small" (128 GB or
less) ... you might try the trick from the old days of making a small boot
partition that holds the kernel image on tracks near the beginning of the
drive.

>2. The Aver TV card I got has the Conexant chip (Fusion 878A), which (if I
>recall correctly) previous posts and the MythTV install guide say is not well
>supported under Linux.

This is not quite correct. The 878A is, as you might guess from the number,
a bt878 chip. What you remember seeing is a report that Hauppauge is using
a new Conexant chip (the CX21881) that is not *yet* supported at all (not
"not well") under Linux ... though there is a project under way to support
this chip.

I've had uneven results here with cheap AverTV cards, but not based on the
chipset. The older rev uses a SONY daughterboard, and it is subject to
periodic problems with the bttv module; the newer rev, which just has a
couple of capacitors where the daughterboard was, works quite reliably for
me, with Myth and with other capture applications.
RE: RE: HD, AverTV, & WinTV 250 sale [ In reply to ]
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Hash: SHA1

> 2. The Aver TV card I got has the Conexant chip (Fusion
> 878A), which (if I
> recall correctly) previous posts and the MythTV install guide
> say is not well
> supported under Linux.

That's not correct. The problem is with the Connexant CX2388x
series, not the Bt8x8's. The CX2388x's have an alpha driver
available at bytesex.org.

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Re: RE: HD, AverTV, & WinTV 250 sale [ In reply to ]
> you might try the trick from the old days of making a small boot
> partition that holds the kernel image on tracks near the beginning
> of the drive.

Even easier: just find the smallest IDE drive you have and use that to
boot from. Never have to worry about whether LILO or BIOS or GRUB or
whatever supports the huge disk.

-jim
RE: HD, AverTV, & WinTV 250 sale [ In reply to ]
> 1. 160GB disk NOT supported by my BIOS (137GB max supported)

Ray and Jim were both correct and I have the 160GB working. Thanks for your
advice. The Maxtor EZ-BIOS confused me. Plus when I first tried to install
Linux on the hard drive it said there was no partition table. I created a
partition table by booting from my RedHat Linux Install CD and going to rescue
where I used fdisk to create a small dummy partition. From there on I had no
problems. BTW: RedHat did put a small boot partition at the beginning of the
drive.

rKulagowshi - Thanks for pointing out that the AverTV chip is a BT8x8 so it is
supported. Haven't gotten far enough along to try it yet.