[ale] Curious video boot problem.

[Byron Jeff]

Hi folks,

Long story. Problem is at the bottom of the post...

A couple of years ago in search for a quieter desktop I purchased an Intel
D2500HN MB with integrated Atom processor and video. At the time I could
not figure out how to get the silly thing to boot, so I put it aside.

Last month I reluctantly rejoined the Comcast legion as they save me $90 a
month vs individual services and have 105Mb residential internet. I walked
away from them last time because they needlessly encrypted their content
such that each outlet required a settop box. At the time I was running a
MythTV setup capturing analog content. Encryption killed that.

My hopes that their whole house DVR service being usable were
pretty quickly dashed. The integration between the DVR and the individual
settop boxes is woefully lacking. I swiched from DISH and their Hopper
setup. It's miles better in terms of both DVR integration and home media
integration to the house DLNA server. And of course the settop boxes cost
$10 a month apiece.

Fortunately while I was away, solutions to the tuning of encrypted channels
has been solved. I bought a HDHomerun Prime, got a cablecard from Comcast
for $1.50 a month, and now I have three available HD tuners that MythTV can
once again use. So I'm back into the MythTV business. I've done some
testing using Kodi as a front end on a RasPi and it looks really good with
each of LiveTV, Recorded, and DLNA home media. Just as a quick aside, if
you try this setup and Live TV doesn't work, disable IPV6 in the myth
backend.

So on to my problem, which is the backend. In trying to implement the
backend using cheap, efficient, and quiet components, I built one around a
pcdiuno3 nano, which is a RasPi workalike with integrated SATA and Gigabit
Ethernet. It works, but unfortunately it's unstable, locking up at random
intervals.

So in my search for more stability, I happened across the D2500HN again.
It's faster, more memory, passively cooled, and Intel based. Perfect for
the application. I dusted it off, threw in some laptop DDR3 Ram, and
attempted to boot it again. Again no luck. But with some real motivation to
actually get it working I dug a bit more. Eventually I came across a post
that indicated that the boot booted with a PCI video card, and did not
without one. I happened to have a PCI vidcard handy, threw it in, and lo
and behold the board finally booted!

I upgraded the BIOS to the latest version I could find and dug through the
settings. On video the settings were Auto, External, and Manual. Since I
wanted to get rid of the PCI card, I selected manual. But instead of seeing
a listing with both the internal and external video adapters, the BIOS only
shows the external adapter for selection.

So I'm stuck. The board boots, but only if the external PCI video is
physically installed. Even worse is that I'm trying into install into a low
profile case, but the boot fails if I plug the card into the PCI riser. It
only works if it's plugged directly into the PCI slot.

I've never seen this before, and am seeking some help. If I'm really stuck
I guess I'll just keep the card and just have it sticking out of the box I
was planning to use. But this is going to be a headless box. So
it really doesn't need even one video adapter, much less two.

Any suggestions welcome.

BAJ

-- 
Byron A. Jeff
Associate Professor: Department of Computer Science and Information Technology
College of Information and Mathematical Sciences
Clayton State University
http://faculty.clayton.edu/bjeff