Via Epia M10000 (C3 1ghz Nehemiah) Success story!

[troyboy162]

[SIZE="6"]this is a WIP ill be editing alot but i thought id put it up since its already worth something[/SIZE]

parts needed-
os:xp sp2 stripped to minimum with Nlite basicaly all that was left was basic hardware sopport for the things in the comp, internet explorer, and media player 9
mobo: Epia M-10000 Nehemiah (1ghz small fan)
ram: el cheapo kingston value 512mb ddr
hard drive: 320 GB Western Digital caviar SE
tv tuner:Hauppauge PVR-150 (not the MCE one)
dvd drive: slimline LG

the story
It started with my mothers need to replace her old VCR. She is a typical VCR user with little need for anything fancy and simply needed to record 3-4 hours per day. The budget was <$300. the "want list" was that the unit must be non intrusive, quiet, and have minimal impact on the electric bill. First thought was mini-itx with Linux and mythtv. I sourced out a great deal on an older minit-itx system from ebay seller link. When I did some quick research I found that this mini-itx was being used for PVRs so I went ahead and got it.
The nightmare-
Heres the deal...Linux has really spotty support for via in general and this motherboard in particular seems to be lost in the sauce. After 4 days with various modern distributions (mythubuntu, ubuntu, mythdora) I had numerous seemingly unfixable issues. Number one was that the onboard mpeg2 decoder was not being used. To this day I'm not sure if anyone ever really got it working in Linux. So right there the golden chip that makes this little underpowered board a contender was out of the fight. Also 3d acceleration(not important but geez) was not working and the Hauppauge remote(huge fight to get working) had unacceptable lag issues. If that wasn't enough Linux had DMA issues with the board and grub would often error denoting that it could not see the hard drive. It broke my heart but I had to scrap my plans to use Linux.
the conclusion
Long story short....stripped down windows running the absolute minimum programs/codec/filters with GBPVR was the solution and is beyond my expectations for the project.


complete list of codecs/filters/programs installed
Ace Mega codecs pack (only the following from that pack are installed. importand that no more are install)
*also during installation make sure to check the box that says stop media player from downloading codecs
3ivx video decoder 4.5.1.30
3ivx muxer filter 4.5.1.30
cyberlink dvd navigator filter 5.00.1031
cyberlink mpeg2 video-sp decoder 5.0.1031
cyberlink line21 video decoder 4.0.3030
ac3filter 1.01a

motherboard:
i decided not to install the via 4 in 1 drivers since i read they were not as good as current SP2 MS drivers and since the system seems to be good without them. audio, lan, bios 1.16, and usb 2.0 drivers were found here http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/mainbo...oard_id=81

the video driver was from here. the newest one fixes a huge crash issue that i was having

the PVR-150 did not get the whole bath of programs that hauppauge wants you to install. instead just these two were put in for the basic driver and the IR remote. older drivers are said to give better picture but this is output onto a tv so i did not do much testing.
http://hauppauge.lightpath.net/softwarer..._25239.exe
http://www.snapstream.net/download/pvr15...ivers.aspx

dx9c with the hotfix for quartz.dll (not sure if it did anything)
along with this hotfixdvb hotfix(not sure if id does anything)

.net 1.1
.net 2.0
ms visual c++ redistubutable
GBPVR 1.5.1 (keep in mind i use the GBPVR.exe included and not the new Px2PVR.exe that has all the visual bells and whisles)
setup screens
other codec settings
fixes:
pause live tv fix make /temp
codec settings

[blackpaw]

Thanks troy, very interesting. I'd be interested in more details on your hardware (case etc) and how quiet it is running.

[whurlston]

Great writeup. I'd be interested in more details as well.

[blackpaw]

Thanks turajb, I've added your site to my links. Useful for research that.

[troyboy162]

Sounds like a slightly scaled down version of what I have been running for a very quite a while now. If you have questions, I have done tons of research on getting this hardware working perfectly with WinXP & GBPVR; trying to utilize as much on the mini-itx's on-board hardware as possible. There is a link to my initial write up & a list of my current hardware specs in my signature, in case you are interested... Enjoy your new mini-itx PVR.

hey there! yes your page was a huge help and inspired me to put as much info down about my build as i could. its funny because the finail write up will include thanks to you and links to your page that helped me sooo much.
thanks!

[Bathman]

Very interesting post indeed. I just built myself a Mini Itx client but I used a Intel D201GLY2. I considered a VIA iDOT PC3500G PC-1 Mainboard which has a 1.5Ghz C7-D. (http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=11881). Although it is flex ATX it has the new IGP unichrome graphics that would support VMR9 and if it didn't well I could always use a PCI graphics card. Also Via has (finally) released an ITX board with a PCI express slot (EPIA SN 18000EG) and it comes witha 1.8GHz C7 processor.

Frankly I am very pleased with my Intel motherboard and although on paper VIA offerings appear better I simply dare not buy VIA. I have had problems with them in the past as have many other people problems. They are also marginal at best performance wise for GBPVR. My intel board with initially a nvidia 6200 PCI and presently a MX4000 worked flawlessly and was very straight forward to set up.

I will most certainly watch your developments closely.