[MrMaxP]

Hi all,

I've been using XBMC on xbox for years but since it's got flakey lately I'm swapping to Live on an old laptop.

After installing live to HD I got a login prompt and the screen jumped every few seconds as if it was trying to start xserver (forgive me if my terminology is wrong, I'm relatively new to linux). Assuming a video driver issue I downloaded the driver for my card (GeForce4 440 Go) from Nvidia and installed it from a terminal and rebooted.

Now it all works fine except in slow motion. The GFX update is cripplingly slow. I get a 1 frame update every 5 seconds or so. Everything is functional but it's obviously unusable. I can also only get 640x480 and 320x240 resolutions, I'm guessing due to an unobtainable EDID.

I've scoured the internet for solutions and come up with nothing. I've modified my xorg.conf to include various options for NVIDIA and I've looked through my Xorg.0.log file and everything seems fine (apart from the EDID issue). The Xorg.0.log shows the 3d and 2d acceleration initializing with no errors and I can't see anything else wrong in here.

Of course I could be barking up the wrong tree and it may not be anything to do with the nvidia driver!

Does anyone have any pointers for me? I'm completely stumped and I've spent all day on this instead of working

Thanks in advance,
Max

[alexpigment]

I'm no expert on this at all, but my guess is that the card is just too old (8 years old) to run the interface smoothly. It's all openGL-based if I recall. Frankly, I don't think XBMC is the type of thing to run on old hardware. If you have a relatively new video card, most other hardware can be low-powered and still get the job done very nicely, but the video card is the main thing that makes XBMC worth using.

If you're not doing much with the laptop and it still functions as a laptop (working screen, wireless, battery, etc), you may be able to do a craigslist trade for someone with an ION-based nettop. I'm sure there's someone out there who'd rather have an old underpowered laptop than a newer underpowered desktop.

[MrMaxP]

Ah yes, I would have thought so too if it wasn't for part of the story I've missed out.

Before trying Live I installed an old Ubuntu I had lying around (hardy I think) and upgraded and updated etc, installed the correct drivers and then installed XBMC. XBMC under this configuration on the same laptop worked wonderfully. Perfectly smooth 60fps and even managed 720p HD over the network. Unfortunately this combination won't play DVD video no matter what I tried. Which is why I turned to Live which will happily play DVD video on this laptop but with this slow down problem.

And when I say slow I mean slow. I've timed it and it's 7 seconds per frame! I'm pretty sure it's the video. Playing a DVD will play sounds at full speed with a video frame update every 7 or so seconds.

[Hannes The Hun]

Mr. Max, try XBMCbuntu

[MrMaxP]

Thanks, downloading now.

[MrMaxP]

After following the instructions for XBMCbuntu I've got a very slick working XBMC setup on my old laptop.

Unfortunately it won't play DVD's. It just does nothing at all when you try.

So, back to square one I'm afraid. Either I need to fix the very poor framerate on the Live installation or I need to figure out how to get my 9.10 XBMCbuntu install to play DVD's

Any idea's?

Max

[MrMaxP]

After many days of Googleing I found out that it's a common issue. Setting "nopat" on boot fixes it. My crappy old laptop now works beautify.

Max

[alexpigment]

I stand corrected

[Hannes The Hun]

and I'm glad it all worked out