Akimbo AP1200:Howto MythTV on the AP1200

=Howto get MythTV running on the AP1200=

By linux_junkie

I heard this set-top-box was x86 based so I got curious. I found one of these on eBay for 20 dollars. This is how I got it to run MythTV. Let it be known, this is from my own experience and I take no responsibility if you kill your system.



Hardware
Micro-Star, Model MS-32991 VER: 0B, OEM Motherboard, Award Bios v6.00

Motherboard Connectors

 * JPWR1 - Motherboard Power
 * FAN1 - Fan Connector
 * DIMM1 - SDRAM Socket
 * JVGA1 - VGA
 * JKM1 - Keyboard/Mouse
 * PCI1 - PCI Slot
 * JFP2 - Front Panel
 * JCOM1 - Serial Port
 * IDE1 - 44-pin (for laptop HD?)
 * IDE2 - 40-pin (80GB is connected here)
 * JHDPWR1 - IDE Power

Rear Panel Connectors

 * S-video out
 * Video out
 * Audio out R
 * Audio out L
 * SPDIF Optical Audio out
 * LAN
 * USB 1.1
 * Power

VGA
I tried to get the VGA working hoping I could get to the Bios setup. It is a 10-pin header located next to the Northbridge heatsink. I tested it with the voltmeter and this is what I found:
 * Pins
 * 1 - 75 ohm (Red?)
 * 2 - 5V
 * 3 - Ground
 * 4 - 5V
 * 5 - 75 ohm (Green?)
 * 6 - 3V
 * 7 - Ground
 * 8 - 3.25V
 * 9 - 75 ohm (Blue?)
 * 10 - 5V



I think pins 2,4,6,8,10 are HSYNC, VSYNC, DDC 5V output, DDC SDA, DDC SLC, but I can't figure out which is which. I played around with several combinations for a while and was not able to get anything to come up on the monitor. If anyone out there could help out with this I would really appreciate it. I would be nice to have VGA working. I read somewhere the 815 does not support "clone mode" so maybe it can only output to one thing only? Anyways we have tv-out working, VGA would just be nice for setup and trouble shooting.

Memory
128MB just wasn't enough to satisfy me. I maxed it out with a 512MB PC133 chip (note: has to be low density memory).



Power Switch
I decided to add a hard power switch to the system. I used one from an old dead ATX power supply.



1U PCI Riser
I added a 1U PCI riser so I could add a TV tuner card. I used what they call a reverse or left side riser that turns the PCI card back towards the motherboard.



TV Tuner
I had to add a TV tuner to make the system complete. I am using a Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150. This card has a hardware MPEG-2 encoder so it does not suck up CPU, with a 733MHz Processor we need all we can get. I had to modify the back of the AP1200 because there is not a PCI card slot.



You can check out some after mod pictures in the AP1200 photo gallery.

Linux And MythTV
I decided to use MythDora. It is a complete package (Fedora and MythTV) wrapped into one, making life much easier.

Installation
For some reason I could not get the AP1200 to boot from CD so I used an old 815 PC I had laying around. MythDora setup was a fairly straight forward Linux install. Once the OS was installed and it was time to reboot I put the hard drive back in the AP1200, and started it up. Mythdora has a first time boot script that asks you questions about your tuner, remote, etc. You can choose any remote, it doesn't really matter because we will customize it later.

LIRC
Setting up the remote was fairly simple. The AP1200's IR for the remote is connected through the ITE IT8712F SuperIO chip. Lucky for me LIRC already has a module for this chip the lirc_it87 driver. So, the first thing to do was to change LIRC to use this module. I deleted any lines in /etc/modprobe.d/lirc and added:

alias char-major-61 lirc_it87 alias lirc_dev lirc_it87

After a reboot I noticed the module was not loading correctly due to a IRQ conflict with the IDE driver on IRQ 11 (UDev also complained about this). So I found this cool source program that can be used to change the settings of the IT8712. It can be found here. By default MythDora does not come with any source building software installed so I had to do this first:

yum install make yum install gcc

and installed all of the dependencies. Then you can run a "make" and the "make install" to install the IT8712 source program. Because UDev complains about the IRQ conflict I wanted to load this command, which changes the IR device to IRQ 7 (default) before UDev starts. So in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit I added 3 lines like this:

. /etc/init.d/functions

echo $"Changing it8712 IR to IRQ 7" /usr/local/sbin/it8712 -l 0x0a -a 0x70 -w 0x07
 * 1) Change it8712 ir irq to 7


 * 1) Check SELinux status

I rebooted and boom LIRC works great! I am using a different remote so I had to run irrecord to setup all the buttons. If someone wants to send me their lircd.conf from the Akimbo remote I will be glad to post it.

Graphics
The graphics on a TV at

Depth    24 Modes   "640x480"

looks pretty good. In MythTV though, small edges of the screen get cut off. I suppose this has to do with the tv-out chip. I noticed that "IEGD for Linux 5.1" was specifically for the 815 (i810 driver) and had fs453 tv-out drivers with it. I wonder if the new intel driver (intel) has any fs453 drivers with it? Any help with this would be appreciated.

Any questions, comments, or corrections you can post them in the Set-Top-Linux forum.

Links:

Information on how to get remote working with Lirc

C source for the front LED's

Well I hope you found this helpful in bringing out the full potential of your system. Again, this is at you own risk; I take no responsibility if you kill your system. And as I always say.......Don't settle for what you have. Hack it!