Mailing List Archive

On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:57:35 +0100, you wrote:

>The SSD on my ancient standalone Myth box failed last night.
>
>It was a combined frontend / backend running Myth 25 on Fedora 16. Once I
>got multirec and DVB-T HD working I didn't see the need to upgrade!
>
>Recordings were on a separate drive and I have database backups but I've
>decided to do a clean install.
>
>I just wanted to ask if anyone has an opinion on whether v31 will still run
>on that hardware. Initial impressions aren't good.
>
>Last night I installed lubuntu on an old 2.5inch spinning laptop drive I
>had lying around and installed myth from the repo.
>
>The GUI was freezing when recording HD.
>
>Now I didn't investigate at all and I was recording to the same old laptop
>drive as I put the OS on so there's much I can improve.
>
>I've ordered a new SSD and i'll be recording to external drives again.
>
>i'd just like to know if I'm wasting my time on that hardware - and would
>compiling from source give me a system better tailored to my hardware?
>
>
>Thanks in advance
>
>David

How much RAM does it have? Linux distros have been growing over the
last few years and the standard ones are typically not comfortable in
2 Gibytes any more. But MythTV is still fine in 4 Gibytes, unless you
have a monster database. Having the GUI freezing may simply be
because old 2.5" laptop drives are very slow, even compared to modern
spinning drives, let alone SSDs. And laptop drives are optimised to
stop rotating at the slightest chance, so if it had to start again,
the delay for that would be significant. My mother was running
Xubuntu 18.04 and MythTV v30 on a 2009 Gigabyte motherboard with 4
Gibytes of RAM and it was fine unless she also ran Firefox and
Thunderbird, which made it swap a little bit. I only had to upgrade
her PC a couple of weeks ago because it started to do CPU thermal
shutdowns when she played a recording for more than an hour.

Your Ion was fine before, and so as long as it has at least 4 Gibytes
of RAM it should still be good. If it only has 2 Gibytes, then you
may need to use one of the special distros that are less resource
hungry.
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On 13/08/2020 16:40, Stephen Worthington wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:57:35 +0100, you wrote:
>
>> The SSD on my ancient standalone Myth box failed last night.
>>
>> It was a combined frontend / backend running Myth 25 on Fedora 16. Once I
>> got multirec and DVB-T HD working I didn't see the need to upgrade!
>>
>> Recordings were on a separate drive and I have database backups but I've
>> decided to do a clean install.
>>
>> I just wanted to ask if anyone has an opinion on whether v31 will still run
>> on that hardware. Initial impressions aren't good.
>>
>> Last night I installed lubuntu on an old 2.5inch spinning laptop drive I
>> had lying around and installed myth from the repo.
>>
>> The GUI was freezing when recording HD.
>>
>> Now I didn't investigate at all and I was recording to the same old laptop
>> drive as I put the OS on so there's much I can improve.
>>
>> I've ordered a new SSD and i'll be recording to external drives again.
>>
>> i'd just like to know if I'm wasting my time on that hardware - and would
>> compiling from source give me a system better tailored to my hardware?
>>
>>
>> Thanks in advance
>>
>> David
>
> How much RAM does it have? Linux distros have been growing over the
> last few years and the standard ones are typically not comfortable in
> 2 Gibytes any more. But MythTV is still fine in 4 Gibytes, unless you
> have a monster database. Having the GUI freezing may simply be
> because old 2.5" laptop drives are very slow, even compared to modern
> spinning drives, let alone SSDs. And laptop drives are optimised to
> stop rotating at the slightest chance, so if it had to start again,
> the delay for that would be significant. My mother was running
> Xubuntu 18.04 and MythTV v30 on a 2009 Gigabyte motherboard with 4
> Gibytes of RAM and it was fine unless she also ran Firefox and
> Thunderbird, which made it swap a little bit. I only had to upgrade
> her PC a couple of weeks ago because it started to do CPU thermal
> shutdowns when she played a recording for more than an hour.
>
> Your Ion was fine before, and so as long as it has at least 4 Gibytes
> of RAM it should still be good. If it only has 2 Gibytes, then you
> may need to use one of the special distros that are less resource
> hungry.

This stirred dim memories of a long thread here a couple of years ago -
nominally about an 'indoor antenna' It might be worth searching for
'zotac ion linux nic support' IIRC centos had dropped support for the
nvidia nic. It may be better now.

John P


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On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 at 18:27, John Pilkington <johnpilk222@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 13/08/2020 16:40, Stephen Worthington wrote:
> > On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:57:35 +0100, you wrote:
> >
> >> The SSD on my ancient standalone Myth box failed last night.
> >>
> >> It was a combined frontend / backend running Myth 25 on Fedora 16.
> Once I
> >> got multirec and DVB-T HD working I didn't see the need to upgrade!
> >>
> >> Recordings were on a separate drive and I have database backups but I've
> >> decided to do a clean install.
> >>
> >> I just wanted to ask if anyone has an opinion on whether v31 will still
> run
> >> on that hardware. Initial impressions aren't good.
> >>
> >> Last night I installed lubuntu on an old 2.5inch spinning laptop drive I
> >> had lying around and installed myth from the repo.
> >>
> >> The GUI was freezing when recording HD.
> >>
> >> Now I didn't investigate at all and I was recording to the same old
> laptop
> >> drive as I put the OS on so there's much I can improve.
> >>
> >> I've ordered a new SSD and i'll be recording to external drives again.
> >>
> >> i'd just like to know if I'm wasting my time on that hardware - and
> would
> >> compiling from source give me a system better tailored to my hardware?
> >>
> >>
> >> Thanks in advance
> >>
> >> David
> >
> > How much RAM does it have? Linux distros have been growing over the
> > last few years and the standard ones are typically not comfortable in
> > 2 Gibytes any more. But MythTV is still fine in 4 Gibytes, unless you
> > have a monster database. Having the GUI freezing may simply be
> > because old 2.5" laptop drives are very slow, even compared to modern
> > spinning drives, let alone SSDs. And laptop drives are optimised to
> > stop rotating at the slightest chance, so if it had to start again,
> > the delay for that would be significant. My mother was running
> > Xubuntu 18.04 and MythTV v30 on a 2009 Gigabyte motherboard with 4
> > Gibytes of RAM and it was fine unless she also ran Firefox and
> > Thunderbird, which made it swap a little bit. I only had to upgrade
> > her PC a couple of weeks ago because it started to do CPU thermal
> > shutdowns when she played a recording for more than an hour.
> >
> > Your Ion was fine before, and so as long as it has at least 4 Gibytes
> > of RAM it should still be good. If it only has 2 Gibytes, then you
> > may need to use one of the special distros that are less resource
> > hungry.
>
> This stirred dim memories of a long thread here a couple of years ago -
> nominally about an 'indoor antenna' It might be worth searching for
> 'zotac ion linux nic support' IIRC centos had dropped support for the
> nvidia nic. It may be better now.
>
> John P
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>


Thanks for the replies.

The box only has 2GB RAM sadly, and the BIOS steals 512K of that( onboard
Graphics?), but one advantage of old hardware is I might be able to find
some DDR2 memory lying about the house somewhere.

I didn't have any problems with the NIC or any other hardware when I did my
test install yesterday, but I had to use quite an old version of the nVidia
driver (340 I think).

Anyway the SSD arrived last night so I'm giving it a go, and if that board
can't hack it then I'm on the lookout for new hardware. I liked that ion
board because it was small and quiet. GUI wasn't snappy but it was OK, and
the Video playback was pretty good.

Regards

D

On 14/08/2020 08:36, David Watkins wrote:
> Thanks for the replies.
>
> The box only has 2GB RAM sadly, and the BIOS steals 512K of that(
> onboard Graphics?), but one advantage of old hardware is I might be able
> to find some DDR2 memory lying about the house somewhere.
>
> I didn't have any problems with the NIC or any other hardware when I did
> my test install yesterday, but I had to use quite an old version of the
> nVidia driver (340 I think).
>
> Anyway the SSD arrived last night so I'm giving it a go, and if that
> board can't hack it then I'm on the lookout for new hardware.  I liked
> that ion board because it was small and quiet.  GUI wasn't snappy but it
> was OK, and the Video playback was pretty good.

Please keep us posted. I for one would be very interested to know how
you get on. My frontend is on Zotac Ion. I hope to move from 29 to 31 at
some stage and have been wondering how well the new rendering code works
on this old, probably not much tested platform.
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On 14/08/2020 08:36, David Watkins wrote:
>
> Thanks for the replies.
>
> The box only has 2GB RAM sadly, and the BIOS steals 512K of that(
> onboard Graphics?), but one advantage of old hardware is I might be able
> to find some DDR2 memory lying about the house somewhere.
>
> I didn't have any problems with the NIC or any other hardware when I did
> my test install yesterday, but I had to use quite an old version of the
> nVidia driver (340 I think).
>
> Anyway the SSD arrived last night so I'm giving it a go, and if that
> board can't hack it then I'm on the lookout for new hardware.  I liked
> that ion board because it was small and quiet.  GUI wasn't snappy but it
> was OK, and the Video playback was pretty good.
>

Please keep us posted. I for one would be very interested to know how
you get on. My frontend is on Zotac Ion. I hope to move from 29 to 31 at
some stage and have been wondering how well the new rendering code works
on this old, probably not much tested platform.
_______________________________________________
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mythtv-users@mythtv.org
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MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org

On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 2:38 AM David Watkins <watkinshome@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 at 18:27, John Pilkington <johnpilk222@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 13/08/2020 16:40, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>> > On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:57:35 +0100, you wrote:
>> >
>> >> The SSD on my ancient standalone Myth box failed last night.
>> >>
>> >> It was a combined frontend / backend running Myth 25 on Fedora 16.
>> Once I
>> >> got multirec and DVB-T HD working I didn't see the need to upgrade!
>> >>
>> >> Recordings were on a separate drive and I have database backups but
>> I've
>> >> decided to do a clean install.
>> >>
>> >> I just wanted to ask if anyone has an opinion on whether v31 will
>> still run
>> >> on that hardware. Initial impressions aren't good.
>> >>
>> >> Last night I installed lubuntu on an old 2.5inch spinning laptop drive
>> I
>> >> had lying around and installed myth from the repo.
>> >>
>> >> The GUI was freezing when recording HD.
>> >>
>> >> Now I didn't investigate at all and I was recording to the same old
>> laptop
>> >> drive as I put the OS on so there's much I can improve.
>> >>
>> >> I've ordered a new SSD and i'll be recording to external drives again.
>> >>
>> >> i'd just like to know if I'm wasting my time on that hardware - and
>> would
>> >> compiling from source give me a system better tailored to my hardware?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Thanks in advance
>> >>
>> >> David
>> >
>> > How much RAM does it have? Linux distros have been growing over the
>> > last few years and the standard ones are typically not comfortable in
>> > 2 Gibytes any more. But MythTV is still fine in 4 Gibytes, unless you
>> > have a monster database. Having the GUI freezing may simply be
>> > because old 2.5" laptop drives are very slow, even compared to modern
>> > spinning drives, let alone SSDs. And laptop drives are optimised to
>> > stop rotating at the slightest chance, so if it had to start again,
>> > the delay for that would be significant. My mother was running
>> > Xubuntu 18.04 and MythTV v30 on a 2009 Gigabyte motherboard with 4
>> > Gibytes of RAM and it was fine unless she also ran Firefox and
>> > Thunderbird, which made it swap a little bit. I only had to upgrade
>> > her PC a couple of weeks ago because it started to do CPU thermal
>> > shutdowns when she played a recording for more than an hour.
>> >
>> > Your Ion was fine before, and so as long as it has at least 4 Gibytes
>> > of RAM it should still be good. If it only has 2 Gibytes, then you
>> > may need to use one of the special distros that are less resource
>> > hungry.
>>
>> This stirred dim memories of a long thread here a couple of years ago -
>> nominally about an 'indoor antenna' It might be worth searching for
>> 'zotac ion linux nic support' IIRC centos had dropped support for the
>> nvidia nic. It may be better now.
>>
>> John P
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>
>
> Thanks for the replies.
>
> The box only has 2GB RAM sadly, and the BIOS steals 512K of that( onboard
> Graphics?), but one advantage of old hardware is I might be able to find
> some DDR2 memory lying about the house somewhere.
>

I have a bunch of ram stick from laptops I threw away or Acer Revos and
other SBCs, etc that I have collected over the years. If you want to send
me a postage label, I will mail them all to you if you want them. They all
work and have been in a drawer for several years now.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-ODo1TRJMibjgUielDXQl-FTbr1PeWpc?usp=sharing

If you want them - just ping me and I'll pack and ship them today if you
can use any of it.

-Greg



> I didn't have any problems with the NIC or any other hardware when I did
> my test install yesterday, but I had to use quite an old version of the
> nVidia driver (340 I think).
>
> Anyway the SSD arrived last night so I'm giving it a go, and if that board
> can't hack it then I'm on the lookout for new hardware. I liked that ion
> board because it was small and quiet. GUI wasn't snappy but it was OK, and
> the Video playback was pretty good.
>
> Regards
>
> D
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@mythtv.org
> http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
> MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org
>

On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 11:40:06 +0100, you wrote:

>On 14/08/2020 08:36, David Watkins wrote:
>> Thanks for the replies.
>>
>> The box only has 2GB RAM sadly, and the BIOS steals 512K of that(
>> onboard Graphics?), but one advantage of old hardware is I might be able
>> to find some DDR2 memory lying about the house somewhere.
>>
>> I didn't have any problems with the NIC or any other hardware when I did
>> my test install yesterday, but I had to use quite an old version?of the
>> nVidia driver (340 I think).
>>
>> Anyway the SSD arrived last night so I'm giving it a go, and if that
>> board can't hack it then I'm on the lookout?for new hardware.? I liked
>> that ion board because it was small and quiet.? GUI wasn't snappy but it
>> was OK, and the Video playback was pretty good.
>
>Please keep us posted. I for one would be very interested to know how
>you get on. My frontend is on Zotac Ion. I hope to move from 29 to 31 at
>some stage and have been wondering how well the new rendering code works
>on this old, probably not much tested platform.

The Ions from that era usually had Nvidia GPUs, so MythTV should still
work fine with them. The Nvidia code is the best tested. Nvidia were
first with VDPAU support, so MythTV got code to use VDPAU, which meant
that when digital TV arrived, most MythTV users got Nvidia GPUs. And
a lot of us have kept on using Nvidia GPUs ever since as the MythTV
code for them works very well.

However, old Nvidia GPUs now have the problem that Nvidia is no longer
supporting the drivers for them. When means that there may not be any
packaged drivers that will work, and even if you compile older drivers
yourself, you will need patches to make them work with the newer
kernels. This is all a great shame, as the hardware is still fine for
the job, and until you need 4k you should be able to keep on using
your old Nvidia hardware.
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mythtv-users@mythtv.org
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http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
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On 2020-08-14 6:58 a.m., Greg Oliver wrote:

> The box only has 2GB RAM sadly, and the BIOS steals 512K of that(
> onboard Graphics?), but one advantage of old hardware is I might be
> able to find some DDR2 memory lying about the house somewhere.
>
>
> I have a bunch of ram stick from laptops I threw away or Acer Revos and
> other SBCs, etc that I have collected over the years.  If you want to
> send me a postage label, I will mail them all to you if you want them.
> They all work and have been in a drawer for several years now.
>
> https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-ODo1TRJMibjgUielDXQl-FTbr1PeWpc?usp=sharing
>
> If you want them - just ping me and I'll pack and ship them today if you
> can use any of it.
>
> -Greg

Unfortunately those are all SODIMMS. David needs 240 pin DIMMS. AND the
Zotac has only 2 memory sockets, so he needs at least 2x2G DIMM sticks.
I have a Zotac Ion, and set it up as a frontend when I got it (waaaay
back in 2009!). It was a very good frontend. Despite the small cooling
setup, it ran at 35C full out. It also ran for 9 straight years as a
VOIP server in my office, with a cumulative downtown which might have
totalled 30 minutes from power outages. Nice little motherboard, now
relegated to backup to the backup.

2G DDR2 DIMMs are very hard to find now.


--
R. Geoffrey Newbury
954 Owenwood Drive
Mississauga, Ontario, L5H 3J2

416-854-8160 newbury@mandamus.org

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On 2020-08-14 7:47 a.m., Stephen Worthington wrote:

> However, old Nvidia GPUs now have the problem that Nvidia is no longer
> supporting the drivers for them. When means that there may not be any
> packaged drivers that will work, and even if you compile older drivers
> yourself, you will need patches to make them work with the newer
> kernels. This is all a great shame, as the hardware is still fine for
> the job, and until you need 4k you should be able to keep on usi
> your old Nvidia hardware.

Drivers in the 340 series are still being updated by NVIDIA (the 340.108
driver (December 2019) patched the driver to fix a kernel change in
5.x??) here:

https://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2015/fedora-nvidia-guide/

Latest updates on July 9, 2020.

Which includes really really good instructions on installation on Fedora
30 through 32.

The drivers are available directly from:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/
And search for GeForce 9 on Linux64.

Geoff

--
R. Geoffrey Newbury
954 Owenwood Drive
Mississauga, Ontario, L5H 3J2

416-854-8160 newbury@mandamus.org
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Well I’ve got the box back together with the new SSD. Still some way to go
in configuring it but initial impressions are that, as predicted, RAM is an
issue.

Backend and mysql take about 15% CPU capacity while recording, and the
front end menu response is pretty snappy until I start a playback. Then I
see kswapd taking 70-90% of the CPU and things grind to a bit of a halt!
Playback very choppy and front end unresponsive.

I haven’t given up get. I haven’t tweaked playback profiles yet and I'm not
sure VDPAU is working properly?

vdpauinfo shows H264 MAIN & HIGH decoding as available, but not BASELINE.
I’m not sure if that matters?

I should have some DDR2 RAM somewhere, but they’re probably 1GB sticks so
no help.

I'll let you know how I get on.

D







On Friday, 14 August 2020, Paul Gardiner <lists@glidos.net> wrote:

> On 14/08/2020 08:36, David Watkins wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the replies.
>>
>> The box only has 2GB RAM sadly, and the BIOS steals 512K of that( onboard
>> Graphics?), but one advantage of old hardware is I might be able to find
>> some DDR2 memory lying about the house somewhere.
>>
>> I didn't have any problems with the NIC or any other hardware when I did
>> my test install yesterday, but I had to use quite an old version of the
>> nVidia driver (340 I think).
>>
>> Anyway the SSD arrived last night so I'm giving it a go, and if that
>> board can't hack it then I'm on the lookout for new hardware. I liked that
>> ion board because it was small and quiet. GUI wasn't snappy but it was OK,
>> and the Video playback was pretty good.
>>
>
> Please keep us posted. I for one would be very interested to know how you
> get on. My frontend is on Zotac Ion. I hope to move from 29 to 31 at some
> stage and have been wondering how well the new rendering code works on this
> old, probably not much tested platform.
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@mythtv.org
> http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
> MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org
>

>> However, old Nvidia GPUs now have the problem that Nvidia is no longer
>> supporting the drivers for them. When means that there may not be any
>> packaged drivers that will work, and even if you compile older drivers
>> yourself, you will need patches to make them work with the newer
>> kernels. This is all a great shame, as the hardware is still fine for
>> the job, and until you need 4k you should be able to keep on usi
>> your old Nvidia hardware.
>
> Drivers in the 340 series are still being updated by NVIDIA (the 340.108
> driver (December 2019) patched the driver to fix a kernel change in
> 5.x??) here:
>
> https://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2015/fedora-nvidia-guide/
>
> Latest updates on July 9, 2020.
>
> Which includes really really good instructions on installation on Fedora
> 30 through 32.
>
> The drivers are available directly from:
> https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/
> And search for GeForce 9 on Linux64.
>
> Geoff

Hopefully this first ever reply is formatted correctly....

Just thought I’d chime in about running mythtv 0.31 front end only on xubuntu 20.04

I upgraded my in early on with 8gb of ram, but it still runs fine. It still runs well enough for a bedroom machine.

Greg

On 14/08/2020 12:47, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>
> The Ions from that era usually had Nvidia GPUs, so MythTV should still
> work fine with them. The Nvidia code is the best tested. Nvidia were
> first with VDPAU support, so MythTV got code to use VDPAU, which meant
> that when digital TV arrived, most MythTV users got Nvidia GPUs. And
> a lot of us have kept on using Nvidia GPUs ever since as the MythTV
> code for them works very well.

That's good to know. I was aware of the history, but I thought use of
Nvidia for MythTV was getting rarer amongst MythTV users. When I can get
onto 31, I'm tempted to swap to a NUC myself.

> However, old Nvidia GPUs now have the problem that Nvidia is no longer
> supporting the drivers for them. When means that there may not be any
> packaged drivers that will work, and even if you compile older drivers
> yourself, you will need patches to make them work with the newer
> kernels. This is all a great shame, as the hardware is still fine for
> the job, and until you need 4k you should be able to keep on using
> your old Nvidia hardware.

I'm using opensuse and so far there have been packages from Nvidia. I
seem to be on 390.132. I guess I could see support disappear at any time.

Cheers,
Paul.
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On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 at 19:16, R. G. Newbury <newbury@mandamus.org> wrote:

> On 2020-08-14 7:47 a.m., Stephen Worthington wrote:
>
> > However, old Nvidia GPUs now have the problem that Nvidia is no longer
> > supporting the drivers for them. When means that there may not be any
> > packaged drivers that will work, and even if you compile older drivers
> > yourself, you will need patches to make them work with the newer
> > kernels. This is all a great shame, as the hardware is still fine for
> > the job, and until you need 4k you should be able to keep on usi
> > your old Nvidia hardware.
>
> Drivers in the 340 series are still being updated by NVIDIA (the 340.108
> driver (December 2019) patched the driver to fix a kernel change in
> 5.x??) here:
>
> https://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2015/fedora-nvidia-guide/
>
> Latest updates on July 9, 2020.
>
> Which includes really really good instructions on installation on Fedora
> 30 through 32.
>
> The drivers are available directly from:
> https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/
> And search for GeForce 9 on Linux64.
>
> Geoff
>
>
>
Well I got my Zotac Ion working over the weekend, just over a week after
the hard disk failure after more hours of effort than I care to admit.

I bought a new SSD, scrounged 4GB of RAM and have ended up running Fedora
32 and MythTV v32 (Master), which has a nice symmetry but is not what I was
aiming for!

To start with I installed lubuntu 20.04 with Myth31 and then lubuntu 18.04
with Myth 29, because I was having intermittent playback problems and had
read about big changes in the playback code for Myth 30 and 31 (certainly
the playback profile settings have changed a lot). But that didn't really
make a lot of difference so I messed around with Motherboard BIOS settings
a bit to no avail before changing tack.

I reset my Motherboard to factory settings and installed Fedora FC32
following the instructions in Geoff Newbury's message above, including the
patched-for-kernel-5.7' version of the 340.108 nvidia driver.

I installed Mythtv 31 from the Fedora Repo and immediately hit the MariaDB
bug! I tried replacing MariaDB with Community-MYSQL and trashed the
database into an unuseable state so reinstalled Fedora 32 again from
scratch.

This time I installed MySQL from the Community repo and built MythTV 31
from source.

This time I didn't get playback at all. I got sound but a black screen
when playing recordings. I went through the playback settings until I was
sure they were correct and then trawled the logs to find the
VDPCreateOutputSurface error that was causing the problems.

Googling didn't reveal anything helpful about that error and with nothing
much to lose I installed MythTV 'Master', just in case. Master behaved the
same and I was at a bit of a dead end, at which I remembered that BIOS
reset.

It turned out that I now only had 64MB RAM assigned to the on board video
(despite 512MB disappearing from available RAM on boot up). I increased
that to 256MB and suddenly the room was full of light!

So after all that I can report that my Zotac Ion (ionitx-A-B) *can* still
work as a combined MythTVback and front end.

It's got 4MB RAM, The OS and Database are on an SSD and I've got two
external 1TB drives. Sound is from the motherboard stereo jack into a
stereo amplifier.

I'm using the VDPAU Normal playback profile without changes. That's the
only preconfigured VDPAU profile in 31 and 32. It's possible to set the
de-interlacer quality to low or high but I haven't touched that yet.

All I have to do now is get the shutdown and wakeup working and configure
my remote control.

Hope this helps someone and if anyone needs some more information please
let me know.

Take Care,

D