Puppy for a VIA EPIA Multi-Media Linux Machine?

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r3bol
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Puppy for a VIA EPIA Multi-Media Linux Machine?

#1 Post by r3bol »

I am very interested in one of the fan-less VIA EPIA Series http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/mainboards/ (or similar brand) mini-motherboards. I aim for it to be used for internet activities and as a DVD player.
I was wondering if puppy runs on these types of MMB and whether Puppy or other live distros made use of some of the MPEG acceleration features some of them come with?
Other distro considerations would be GeeBox and KnoppMyth (any other recommendations?).
The one thing that worried me was DVD playback. I noticed my encrypted DVD movies played a bit choppy in puppy, but non-encrypted played ok. I havent messed with any settings yet though so maybe I can sort that out.

Any advice for a noob is much appreciated.
Thanks.

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Flash
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#2 Post by Flash »

I think the VIA Epia has a hardware DVD decoder onboard, but I don't know if Linux uses it. It might be worth asking VIA. As popular as their Epia is with people who run Linux on it, they should be eager to make sure it works with Linux.

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pakt
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Re: Puppy for a VIA EPIA Multi-Media Linux Machine?

#3 Post by pakt »

r3bol, you might try Minipup2.02R from this site: http://bexa.org/

It uses MPlayer instead of Gxine and works quite well with multimedia.

Paul
Methinks Raspberry Pi were ideal for runnin' Puppy Linux

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r3bol
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#4 Post by r3bol »

Thanks, just asked VIA about linux support. I'll try that other puppy version too.
I have been googling and found that checking DMA is 'on' could help with DVD playback. How do I check this in puppy? A forum search came back zero.

I thought this was interesting: GNU/Linux DVD Player Review
Last edited by r3bol on Mon 02 Apr 2007, 19:24, edited 2 times in total.

tempestuous
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#5 Post by tempestuous »

Most EPIA's are equipped with the VIA Unichrome graphics chip, which features hardware-assisted MPEG2 decoding ... with the right drivers.
First you need the 3D Unichrome graphics driver installed and working - use MU's 3D Control Centre to install -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=14463

Then you need a video playback application which supports the "XvMC" hardware-assisted feature -
MPlayer 1.0rc1 + XvMC http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=13216

Several forum members have Puppy installed on their Epia's with XvMC working.
Flash wrote:I think the VIA Epia has a hardware DVD decoder onboard
No, the Unichrome's XvMC feature is not full hardware decoding, just hardware-assisted decoding.
Examples of full hardware decoding cards are the DXR2 and DXR3 products.

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pakt
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#6 Post by pakt »

Type 'dmesg | grep -i dma' in a terminal. You should see something like this:

ide0: BM-DMA at 0xbfa0-0xbfa7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio

Paul
Methinks Raspberry Pi were ideal for runnin' Puppy Linux

tempestuous
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#7 Post by tempestuous »

dvw86 wrote a nice wiki page about Puppy + Epia ML8000 - http://puppylinux.org/wikka/MiniITX

And Minipup, which Paul mentioned, is currently being upgraded. It will include the latest MPlayer version with Openchrome-XvMC support.

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r3bol
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#8 Post by r3bol »

sh-3.00# dmesg | grep -i dma
VP_IDE: VIA vt8235 (rev 00) IDE UDMA133 controller on pci0000:00:11.1
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfc00-0xfc07, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfc08-0xfc0f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio
hda: 78242976 sectors (40060 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(100)
hdc: ATAPI 40X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)

Is everything I get back.
Thanks for the link. I've seen that before, but completely forgot about it!

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pakt
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#9 Post by pakt »

ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfc00-0xfc07, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfc08-0xfc0f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio
Looks to me your hard disk (hda) and your CD-ROM (hdc) both have DMA set :)
Methinks Raspberry Pi were ideal for runnin' Puppy Linux

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r3bol
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#10 Post by r3bol »

If anyone else is interested, here is my reply from VIA...
Dear Leo, Thanks for your mail. Our EPIA mainboards include a MPEG2 accelerator. In addition the EPIA SP, EX, NX, N and NL are including a MPEG4 accelerator as well. To use these features you have to use special versions of the Xine or mplayer. These can be downloaded for free at VIAArena.com. Since our drivers are precompiled for Fedora we also suggest using this distribution.

Best Regards,
VIA Technologies, Inc.
www.viaembedded.com
Should you have any query please email to embedded@via.com.tw

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lvds
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#11 Post by lvds »

tempestuous wrote:...And Minipup, which Paul mentioned, is currently being upgraded. It will include the latest MPlayer version with Openchrome-XvMC support.
Hi,

Will this upgraded Mplayer still works on all others motherboards ? Or is it specially dedicated to a special brand motherboards ?

And which PET-PUP package are you using to do this (as i am also working on Mplayer problems on my side and need to upgrade a few things) ?

Best regards,
Laurent.

tempestuous
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#12 Post by tempestuous »

Minipup will have ALMOST the same version of MPlayer that is already available as a dotpup here -
http://puppyfiles.org/dotpupsde/dotpups ... er-1.0rc1/
The only difference is GTK2 compatibility, because Puppy's version of GTK2 changed from Puppy-2.10 onwards.
What does this mean ... don't install this dotpup on versions of Puppy earlier than 2.10. Or the gui will fail to launch.
lvds wrote:Will this upgraded Mplayer still works on all others motherboards ? Or is it specially dedicated to a special brand motherboards ?
Yes, this MPlayer package has some specially enabled features, but remains compatible with all hardware regardless of whether that hardware supports any of these features.

Read the full explanation here - http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=13216

DavidBell
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#13 Post by DavidBell »

I have two, an EPIA-V & an EPIA-ML.

Both work with Puppy except the EPIA-V has only one IDE slot and you have to have the the HDD & CD/DVD on the same cable. I find that you can only read one CD with this arrangement, to read another you have to reboot :-( At least that's the case with Puppy 2.12

On the plus side for the EPIA-V it has S-Video out which would be nice for a DVD player. There are a lot of models and you need to check which ones have the features/plugs that you want.

One other thing, again with Puppy 2.12, I find when you use Xorg any scrolling or screen updates makes the sound jump. It doesn't happen with Xvesa.

DB

tempestuous
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#14 Post by tempestuous »

It's true that Xorg consumes more system resources than Xvesa, but when it comes to media applications this overhead is worthwhile.
For media playback Xorg is vastly superior to Xvesa, especially when the correct "xv" video output option is selected in MPlayer.

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lvds
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#15 Post by lvds »

tempestuous wrote:It's true that Xorg consumes more system resources than Xvesa, but when it comes to media applications this overhead is worthwhile.
For media playback Xorg is vastly superior to Xvesa, especially when the correct "xv" video output option is selected in MPlayer.
ok thanks but which pack do i have to install: nvidia or unichrome ? ...i use a video on my motherboard and others computers have i945 onboard video chipsets (or is it 845... anyway it is the ones intel put on every motherboard :wink: )

Best regards,
Laurent

tempestuous
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#16 Post by tempestuous »

If you don't have nVidia/i810/Unichrome graphics then it doesn't matter which version you use.
Apart from the xvmc feature, the 2 dotpups are identical.

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lvds
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#17 Post by lvds »

Hi,

thanks, i now have mplayer running fine BUT i still complains at reading DVD. I use mplayer 1.0rc1, using Xorg with mplayer setup on xv mode. It detects the DVD fine and even display the chapters. But it does not play the dvd and the console contains an error saying it cannot use/find libdvdread.

Are there additional packages i need to install after mplayer so to be able to read DVD or is it a problem with my dvd/cd drive ? It works well with windows, but perhaps puppy needs other libraries to run the dvd drive ?

Best regards,
Laurent.

tempestuous
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#18 Post by tempestuous »

lvds wrote:the console contains an error saying it cannot use/find libdvdread.
Which version of Puppy are you using? Perhaps a customised version?
libdvdread is contained in all "standard" versions of Puppy.
The MPlayer-1.0rc1 dotpup was compiled under Puppy 2.12. It should be compatible with all Puppy versions since Puppy v2.10, which is when most libraries were updated.

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lvds
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#19 Post by lvds »

Hi,

i am building a puppy linux from litepup2.14 and i don't know which package to add to have a full dvd reading mplayer. Do you know what i need to add ?

Best regards,
Laurent.

tempestuous
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#20 Post by tempestuous »

You could normally get those library files from Barry's "petget" (unleashed) collection, but ibiblio is down at the moment, so the easy way is to boot into a recent version of Puppy, and copy over from /usr/lib all files starting with "libdvd..."
There are 3 files, plus 3 symlinks.

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