2013-12-08, 22:05
Now that my NUC has stabilized, I thought I'd share my experiences in case others are interested. I have the i5 NUC (D54250WYK), with a similar build to bmstrong's post above. I'm running a dual boot configuration of Windows 8.1 (which runs primary Plex Media Theater at the moment) and the Gotham Nightlies of OpenElec.
Getting a stable dualboot system was a bit of a hassle. I followed guide in the OpenElec Wiki, but soon found that restarting from OpenElec would result. in a "machine not ready" bios boot error. More searching showed that the ExtLinux 4.xx bootloader used in the guide can have this issue with EFI bioses like the NUC had. OE now ships with version 5.10, so a simple "/usr/bin/extlinux -i /flash" command from SSH updated it, but unfortunately did not come with the updated .c32 files needed for the boot menu. I eventually found all of those (kernel.org download) and was good to go.
In the end however, the extlinux bootloader menu is not worth the hassle, as it can't be controlled by the remote as far as I can tell, so I'll likely default it to OE, then when I need windows, if I hold down Shift or Alt at boot, I can get the menu prompt and switch.
Once the dual boot was sorted, the remaining tweaks were all found in this awesome thread. Remote is working fine in OE thanks to the Autostart change. HD Audio works great, as long as I don't select "Automatically match refresh rates" -- still hoping that last bug gets squashed. I had to enable the "wait for network" setting in OpenElec settings because I use a mySQL library... Without that setting the system cold boots to OpenElec in like 2.5 seconds. Even with it, it is still usable in well under 10 seconds (windows boot is around 5-8 seconds too).
I've found in the gotham nightlies there are a couple of my videos that don't play perfectly with the VAPI hardware decoding enabled (some pixelations), so for now I'm using the multithreaded software decode which seems to be working just fine. I'll play with this some more, and eventually file a bug if needed.
Really, I can't thank folks in this thread enough -- especially lmyllari -- for all your efforts to make this such a great solution for XBMC.
Getting a stable dualboot system was a bit of a hassle. I followed guide in the OpenElec Wiki, but soon found that restarting from OpenElec would result. in a "machine not ready" bios boot error. More searching showed that the ExtLinux 4.xx bootloader used in the guide can have this issue with EFI bioses like the NUC had. OE now ships with version 5.10, so a simple "/usr/bin/extlinux -i /flash" command from SSH updated it, but unfortunately did not come with the updated .c32 files needed for the boot menu. I eventually found all of those (kernel.org download) and was good to go.
In the end however, the extlinux bootloader menu is not worth the hassle, as it can't be controlled by the remote as far as I can tell, so I'll likely default it to OE, then when I need windows, if I hold down Shift or Alt at boot, I can get the menu prompt and switch.
Once the dual boot was sorted, the remaining tweaks were all found in this awesome thread. Remote is working fine in OE thanks to the Autostart change. HD Audio works great, as long as I don't select "Automatically match refresh rates" -- still hoping that last bug gets squashed. I had to enable the "wait for network" setting in OpenElec settings because I use a mySQL library... Without that setting the system cold boots to OpenElec in like 2.5 seconds. Even with it, it is still usable in well under 10 seconds (windows boot is around 5-8 seconds too).
I've found in the gotham nightlies there are a couple of my videos that don't play perfectly with the VAPI hardware decoding enabled (some pixelations), so for now I'm using the multithreaded software decode which seems to be working just fine. I'll play with this some more, and eventually file a bug if needed.
Really, I can't thank folks in this thread enough -- especially lmyllari -- for all your efforts to make this such a great solution for XBMC.
