WSXGA+ on an Acer AL2032WA with Xorg and Nvidia drivers

After a recent apt-get dist-upgrade and upgrade of the Nvidia drivers on my Debian Etch machine, I noticed that my screen resolution was reduced to 1024x768 :-(

Having invested a while ago in my lovely Acer AL2032WA flatscreen monitor, I decided it was high time to get the full value out of it. I had previously been running at 1600x1200 after failing to get 1680x1050 (WSXGA+) to work the last time I tried.

A quick look at the xorg logs didn't tell me much, other than the fact that a bunch of modes weren't validating. Restarting x with the -verboselog switch set to 6 gave me more to go on:

Validating Mode "1680x1050":
...
Mode is rejected: Mode (1680 x 1050) is too large for DFP
Native Resolution (Max: 1280 x 1024).

It seems that the Acer gives some wholly inaccurate resolution information. The Nvidia driver howto told me to add the following option to the Monitor section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Option "ModeValidation" "NoDFPNativeResolutionCheck"

On restarting x I was greeted with beautiful 1680x1050 resolution :-) The only minor annoyance is some panning on the login screen, but I can live with that.

MythTV box - Part 2 - Assembly

Once I finally had all the parts, assembling them all was relatively simple, and it was all done in a couple of hours.

The P150 is a nice little case, but it weighs quite a bit due to the steel plating used in its construction. The easily removed side and front panels enable good access to the interior, although things were bound to get a little cramped once the heatsink went in.

Fitting the Scythe Ninja was perhaps the scariest part of the operation. It requires quite a degree of force to get the clips to engage with the processor mount, and the motherboard was making ominous cracking noises as I struggled with it. This wasn't helped by the fact that the light had faded more than I realised, and I had to frantically grab my headtorch to see what I was doing!

The rest of the components went it smoothly. Although there was not a lot of room to spare between the passive heatsink on the graphics card and the nearby capture card, I figured it would be okay and so far hasn't been a problem.

One of the most unusual features of the case are the rubber band mounts for the hard disk. These are optional but as I was aiming for quiet operation I was eager to try them out. They work really well; even if I strain I really can't hear a peep out of the Western Digital disk (which is reputed to be very quiet anyway).

The P150 has some very handy cable management features, very helpful for keeping the interior free for unimpeded airflow.

The initial power-on in any system build is always a nervous experience, but there were no problems. The P150 doesn't have a case speaker (even though it's listed in all the specs and documentation, weird) so it was difficult to hear the usual POST beeps, I got around this issue by simply running the line-out to a stereo. The A8N-SLI actually has POST voice reporting (HAL here we come), so it was actually a pleasant female voice that first told me my new computer had booted successfully :-)

As a system, I am very pleased with the result. Even with the case fan set to it's lowest setting everything runs very cool, the processor typically at an acceptable 35C. I considered modding the case a bit, switching off the case fan altogether and relying solely on the PSUs' ultra-quiet fan, but it's really quiet enough already. Sometimes you just have to stop tinkering!

MythTV box - Part 1 - Hardware

Over the last few weeks I have been engaged in the process of selecting, ordering and assembling the hardware for my new MythTV box.

I was originally inspired to do this after reading Garry Parkers excellent MythTV Ubuntu HowTo. A quick experiment adding a capture card and MythTV to my existing Debian machine, and I was convinced.

After doing a bit more reading about setting up MythTV systems, I came up with my hardware requirements:

• Silence, or as near to it as possible
• Low power consumption
• Looks

I wanted it to be as quiet as possible as it's going to be running most of the time, and there's nothing more annoying than the constant droning of fans. My existing PVR, a DigiFusion FVRT200, is fairly quiet but I still find it's low volume hard disk hum distracting. Luckily, quietness goes hand in hand with power efficiency, so getting one will go a long way towards achieving the other.

Quite early on I decided *not* to go for an HTPC case, it seems difficult to get a really quiet one and they are fairly limited in terms of expansion space. Given that I was probably left with choosing a standard midi case, it had to be fairly pleasing to the eye as it'll be difficult to hide it entirely behind my (admittedly large) television.

After much research and loss of sleep, I settled on this configuration:

• Case: Antec P150 (spcr)
• Motherboard: ASUSTeK A8N-SLI Premium (custompc)
• CPU: Athlon 64 (Venice) 3500+
• CPU heatsink: SCYTHE Ninja Plus Rev. B (spcr)
• Memory: 2 x 512MB 184-pin DIMM, DDR PC3200
• Graphics: Inno3D GeForce FX5200 128mb DDR 128Bit PCI
• Harddisk: Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000KS, 500GB (spcr)
• Optical: Sony DRU-830A 18x DVD-RW/RAM (cdrlabs)
• Keyboard & mouse: Logitech Cordless Desktop S 510
• Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T PCI x 2 (mythtv)
• Power supply: Neo HE 430W PSU, with case (spcr)
• Network: onboard 2 x gigabit ethernet
• Audio: onboard 7.1

After a few abortive attempts to order the components from dabs.com, I gave up. My order seemed to get stuck at some security checking stage for days on end, then get mysteriously cancelled. Frustrated with their terrible customer service I gave up and defected to ebuyer.com, who handled my order perfectly and even came in a bit cheaper.

The only component I had trouble finding was the Asus motherboard. It was a couple of years old and there did not seem to be a single retail copy anywhere in the UK. As a last resort I tried ebay and found one, despite a few problems the seller had getting parcelforce to pick things up over the Christmas period, it all worked out ok in the end.

In my next post I will go through the assembly process, and include some photos of my lovely new system. After that I will follow up with details of the software installation and configuration process.

Update - 2007.02.04

Just as I was about to begin assembly I discovered a potential compatibility problem between my A8N-SLI Premium motherboard and the Antecs' NeoHE 430 power supply. It turned out not to be a problem for me, but I would advise anyone else using this combination to check out the URL above.