I recently posted this on my blog and figured I'd put it here on the forums as well so that someone will actually read & benefit from it. 
Dharma: XBMCFreak Quick Setup Guide on the Acer Aspire Revo 1600
Tonight I tested Dharma by installing the XBMCFreak version of the Dharma Beta release. Note that this link is a general one to the XBMCFreak home page as opposed to a specific post as they are very actively releasing new versions of their LiveCD at this point. I'd recommend you use the newest one you can find unless you see a bunch of posts over there saying something is horribly broken in a given download (which would be surprising as they are very careful about what they release). If you're starting from scratch and want the wake from suspend via remote to work, definitely use an XBMC Live version based on Kernel 2.6.32-25. This kernel corrects a Linux bug that prevented wake from usb to work via remote control.
Here are the quick steps for those who want to do the same. You really should be able to do this inside an hour following the steps below, but let me know if you have questions and I’ll do my best.
I’m still testing, but so far, most/all of the minor issues I had with the previous versions appear to be resolved by upgrading to this new version. Awesome!
The most ironic thing about how utterly easy this was is all of the steps I had to go through previously to get the last release of XBMC running nearly flawlessly. 11 pages of Q&A not counting the 5 or so that were lost in the lightning storm that year. Compared to the ~1 hour it took me to get this version up and running (apparently) flawlessly, talk about a MAJOR improvement! Thank you to all the devs!
Also, if you're interested in information on how to set up custom remote commands with irexec in XBMC, check out this separate post.
Update: 2010-11-15 -> Note that while this was written for Dharma 1 & 2, the instructions should still be helpful for Dharma 4 as well. Just be sure to grab the most current XBMCFreak ISO from their site.
Dharma: XBMCFreak Quick Setup Guide on the Acer Aspire Revo 1600
Tonight I tested Dharma by installing the XBMCFreak version of the Dharma Beta release. Note that this link is a general one to the XBMCFreak home page as opposed to a specific post as they are very actively releasing new versions of their LiveCD at this point. I'd recommend you use the newest one you can find unless you see a bunch of posts over there saying something is horribly broken in a given download (which would be surprising as they are very careful about what they release). If you're starting from scratch and want the wake from suspend via remote to work, definitely use an XBMC Live version based on Kernel 2.6.32-25. This kernel corrects a Linux bug that prevented wake from usb to work via remote control.
Here are the quick steps for those who want to do the same. You really should be able to do this inside an hour following the steps below, but let me know if you have questions and I’ll do my best.
- Download the XBMCFreak iso using the link directly above (or the most current link for an XBMCFreak iso).
- Burn the ISO to CD or, easier, to a USB disk using Unetbootin.
- Boot your Revo from the USB disk you just created with Unetbootin. (press F12 during the Revo’s boot up to select the disk you wish to boot from)
- Select the option to install XBMCLive. You can install to a separate USB key plugged into the Revo or to the Revo’s hard drive. In my case, I installed to another USB drive first as I didn’t want to blow away my primary install until I did quite a bit of testing with the new version.
- Once the install completes, remove the XBMCFreak Live CD/USB and boot to wherever you installed the Dharma Beta.
- If you are using Analog audio, everything pretty much works out of the box (it did for me at least). If you need HDMI audio, read on.
- Open a terminal connection to your Revo using putty
- Install wget so that you can download the NVIDIA driver.
a. sudo apt-get update
b. sudo apt-get install wget
- Grab the most current stable NVIDIA driver. The 256.53 NVIDIA driver is available using this command: “wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Li...56.53.run”
- Kill the X display using the command: sudo pkill X
- Completely remove all current NVIDIA drivers to ensure you have the most current compatible driver. sudo apt-get --purge remove nvidia-*. [Thanks Balthazaar for the tip]
- Reboot for good measure. (not sure this is necessary, but it can't hurt anything)
- Install the new driver using “sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.53.run” (follow the prompts until it completes)
- Fix the screwed up channel mapping in multi-channel PCM (i.e. FLAC and TrueHD tracks) by downloading these two files (will they ever get this correct?!)
a. “sudo wget http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=f5f9654bb -O /etc/asound.conf”
b. ”sudo wget http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=f2e38265 -O /usr/share/alsa/cards/HDA-Intel.conf”
- reboot for good measure
- Within XBMC, configure Settings \ System \ Video \
a. Audio Output = hdmi
b. Custom Passthrough device = plughw:0,3
- Enjoy!
I’m still testing, but so far, most/all of the minor issues I had with the previous versions appear to be resolved by upgrading to this new version. Awesome!
The most ironic thing about how utterly easy this was is all of the steps I had to go through previously to get the last release of XBMC running nearly flawlessly. 11 pages of Q&A not counting the 5 or so that were lost in the lightning storm that year. Compared to the ~1 hour it took me to get this version up and running (apparently) flawlessly, talk about a MAJOR improvement! Thank you to all the devs!
Also, if you're interested in information on how to set up custom remote commands with irexec in XBMC, check out this separate post.
Update: 2010-11-15 -> Note that while this was written for Dharma 1 & 2, the instructions should still be helpful for Dharma 4 as well. Just be sure to grab the most current XBMCFreak ISO from their site.
