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Good morning, everyone...
[an aside]
[laughing hysterically] I let the cron "pick" fortunes for each message
originating from my system 100% at random. (script available upon request) I
did *not* select the fortune for this message, which tends to make folks
think cron is haunted with the immortal soul of Paul Vixie.
Mind you, the machine we are discussing in this situation is an undefined Dell
belonging to a customer who I coerced into running KDE. As I recall it has
256 M of memory, whopping 80 G worth of disk space and an Intel chipset. It
also had an ATI All-in-Wonder AGP card which Mandrake originally configured
as a Rage 128 Pro. Actually getting the card to be recognized each time at
boot up as something *close* to its true nature was the hardest part of the
show.
[STEP 1]
Configure you XFreeConfig file correctly.
Here's the XFree86Conf file in /etc/X11/ as it was when it left my control:
Section "Device"
Identifier "device1"
BoardName "ATI All-in-Wonder Pro"
Option "power_saver"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Driver "accel"
Device "device1"
Monitor "monitor1"
DefaultColorDepth 24
Subsection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection
I believe I used the default ATI drivers and that, as a result I was able to
get the above configuration to work.
We go to /etc/X11/XFree86Config-4 file:
Section "Files"
# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
# By default, Mandrake 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
# the X server to render fonts.
FontPath "unix/:-1"
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
#DontZap # disable <Crtl><Alt><BS> (server abort)
#DontZoom # disable <Crtl><Alt><KP_+>/<KP_-> (resolution switching)
AllowMouseOpenFail # allows the server to start up even if the mouse
doesn't work
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "dbe" # Double-Buffering Extension
Load "v4l" # Video for Linux
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx" # 3D layer
EndSection
[various other hardware parts, such as mouse and keyboard snipped for brevity]
Once you have the video card set correctly, and it *must* reflect the correct
TV card for it to work, you're ready for the next step. Note the v41 in the
list above. It is somewhat important.
Thus far I have been too busy to mess with the v42 upgrade to Video4Linux, but
I am told by someone I know that it really has fewer bugs than the v41 that
apparently comes with Mandrake 9.0. Perhaps they will convert to v42 in time
for the next development release, in which Video4Linux might work with xawtv
and thus allow video captures.
[STEP 2]
Okay, we're on the home stretch. Download the following RPM's from your choice
of Mandrake mirrors:
xawtv-3.76-5mdk.i586.rpm
xawtv-common-3.76-5mdk.i586.rpm
xawtv-control-3.76-5mdk.i586.rpm
xawtv-misc-3.76-5mdk.i586.rpm
xawtv-web-3.76-5mdk.i586.rpm
liblirc0-0.6.5-2mdk.i586.rpm (satisfies dependencies)
libzvbi0-0.2.1-1mdk.i586.rpm (satisfies dependencies)
Be sure when installing the RPM's to start with xawtv-common, as there are
embedded dependencies in there. ;-) March through the pile and when you've
completely installed all the RPM's, get to a prompt and type xawtv. You'll
probably get a blank screen, but that's OK, too.
Right click on the blank TV screen and up jumps a "friendly" menu bereft of
any help whatsoever. However, before you panic and send me hate mail you
*might* want to try the following settings:
Set TV norm to "ntsc"
Set Video Source to "tuner"
Set Frequency table to "us-cable"
Plug in your favorite television cable of choice and do a channel scan (the
letter Z will start the scan for you).
[Disclaimers]
Mind you, I didn't get to try this on anything other than AT&T Cable TV and
behind a black box at that. However, when the customer took the Mandrake box
home, it worked flawlessly. I haven't a clue whether it will work using a TV
antenna or not. I *do* know it doesn't do the upper channel conversion
without the assistance of the black box from AT&T. It goes to channel
60-something and, once it encounters the AT&T encryption layer, you get to
watch encryption at work. <sigh> However, the remote channel changer works
great with the black box turned on and working. Set the TV tuner to channel 3
and use the black box. ;-)
Now some minor tweaks and twitches:
Press the letter E once you get things responding. It takes a time or two to
get the channels you select to stay in place, so that the system starts up
every time just the way you set it the previous time. Be *sure* to set the
channel settings as your default user name, not as root, as there is a file
in the user's home directory called .xawtv that is updated. If you're on
cable, you may only need channel 3 for it to work. Here is the file I took
from the customer's system before he took it home:
# [Station name]
# capture = overlay | grabdisplay | on | off
# input = Television | Composite1 | S-Video | ...
# norm = PAL | NTSC | SECAM | ...
# channel = #
# fine = # (-128..+127)
# key = keysym | modifier+keysym
# color = #
# bright = #
# hue = #
# contrast = #
[defaults]
norm = ntsc
input = tuner
capture = over
bright = 59%
contrast = 36%
[cable-tv]
channel = 3
Set your video settings in the X Options screen (right click on the screen) to
taste. There is a minor glitch, that if you really skew the video settings,
and lose control of your video settings, remember to right click on the
appropriate slider to pull the slider(s) back down to reasonable settings.
Other than that, the damned sliders work pretty well.
[broken/needs fixing?]
Video capture is broken, but that probably is because the kernel default
apparently is v41, rather than v42, based upon what I've read. If anyone has
any insight into Video4Linux, by all means jump right in here. I didn't have
the time nor inclination to recompile the kernel. <sigh>
If you press Q to drop the handy-dandy menu off the screen, it turns the
entire shooting match off. Click on the controlling window to drop the menu.
Also, remember to set your audio settings up in Kmixer so you can hear the
pretty ads.
I guess that about sums it up. I hope my experience helps someone else. 8-)
Dave
- --
Dave Laird ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
The Used Kharma Lot / The Phoenix Project
Web Page: http://www.kharma.net updated 01/20/2003
Year 2 of running Mandrake Linux workstation on a 100% Microsoft-free system.
An automatic & random thought For the Minute:
Expert, n.:
Someone who comes from out of town and shows slides.
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