I've mentioned before about the SATA ports being oddly laid out on the Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H motherboard. This causes problems with the fan case of the Silverstone Sugo SG-01 and SG-02 cases. The SATA ports are horizontal and face out from the edge of the board. This forces the SATA cables into the fan case. With no modification you can just about use 2 of the ports.

I'm noticing some strange behaviour to do with connecting a USB drive to the HTPC. Mainly, the front USB ports stop responding when I try to format it using GParted. At least, I think it's just the front ports. Currently I've got a USB keyboard and the USB harddrive in two separate front sockets and a USB wireless mouse receiver in the rear, but unfortunately I'm now stuck in an application that will only respond to keyboard.....and the keyboard and HTPC have stopped talking to each other.

ATI have released some newer drivers, namely the AMD Catalyst 8.01 Linux Driver, but we're still without XV support for x1250 integrated graphics.

Also interesting is possible 3D support for the RS690 chipset which I think use the X1250 IGP. In this particular case, I'll happily admit to losing track of which chipset is which.

New PSU
Wow, what a difference a decent PSU can make. The original spare-part PSU I had came bundled with a cheap case. Get what you pay for. It just about did the job of powering the HTPC, but being a cheap 300W PSU wouldn't boot with anything connected to the front USB ports. Not really a problem since it stayed on most of the time, just meant I had to unplug the USB devices, then plug them back in once it was on.

I've just read about a google discussion group for the x1250. Not much information there right now, but what is there is good stuff.

Along with Phoronix, they look the best place to find information on the x1250 on Linux.

I'm still reading through to see if xvideo can work on the board or not. Seems controversial at the moment.

For the time being, I've given up trying to get the onboard ATI x1250 working on the motherboard in Ubuntu 7.10. I'll try it again if some new relevant drivers get released. So I didn't want to spend much if anything on a temporary solution.

I've lived with the homebuilt HTPC for just over a week now.

I knew when I bought it that I was probably too early with the ATI drivers. After trying to install every ATI-related driver I could find, the main FGLRX binary is still the best so far on Gutsy Gibbon. I'm hoping that the opensource RadeonHD driver will be better in the end, for what I want to do with it. I'm not interested in gaming or fast 3d acceleration. I'm interested in video.

I took the plunge and decided to build a HTPC incorporating MythTV in a small-form-factor case.

The aim was to:
- play from my song library
- play from my movie library
- record from DVB Freeview
- remove adverts
- general web-browsing
- perform any rendering of any movie files (just a general computer, useful to have around)