Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Linux - getting an old Zotac to work

My son is all into major league baseball, now that the Bluejays are winning.  We've signed up to mlbtv and can watch a game every day!  (I can't, it's soooo boring!)  But the old wdtv box can't seem to take the hd channel, and it freezes a lot.  Time to buy a new android box!  But first I want to check out my old media box that I once bought for xbmc, now kodi.

I eventually had so much trouble with it, I went for the wdtv.  But it has 4 atom processors and a good gpu.  Linux had trouble supporting it, since everywhere I read, people said that the atom was garbage.  Lucky for me, somebody smart must have one, since there is now specific Atom support in the kernel.

That said, it was a lot of trouble.  There was a bug since 4.2 for the Intel graphics.  I did so many things at once, but I did get it working well.  My only advice is deal with all the device drivers as modules, and make sure you have all the firmware files.  The soundcard is Intel, but it has a Realtek chip, so you have to do that.

Now the only thing I have left to do is put in the MLB add-on for Kodi, it is not 'official' yet, but they say it works.  Can't wait.  Actually this would happen for any Android xbmc or kodi box.

Addition:  while doing this, my son's Acer Aspire S5 stopped working.  We thought it was the famous power button, but it was the battery pack.  I ordered a new one from Aliexpress for $36.  Cheap, but takes weeks to get here.

add2 - the mlb video add-on works!

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