Aasimon.org Wiki

• Make a computer look like a media player.
• Make its primary output be a TV monitor
• Make it usable only by remote control.
• Make it able to play anything!

TODO

• Figure out how to use cvidix (nVidia console output).
• Figure out how to use splashy or equals to remove texbootscreen.
• Look at setterm command (-blank 0) for diabling the blanking of the screen during playback.
• Use Qingy for login (autologin)

• http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Framebuffer_Support
• http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_gensplash
• http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Qingy

First of all we must make sure we have framebuffer support. My box is running with an nVidia GF4 MX card, so I'll be using the nVidia framebuffer driver alongside the VESA one.

Device Drivers  --->
   Graphics support  --->
      <*> Support for frame buffer devices
      ---   Frame buffer hardware drivers
      <*>   Userspace VESA VGA graphics support
      [*]   VESA VGA graphics support
      <*>   nVidia Framebuffer Support
      [*]     Enable DDC Support
      [*]     Lots of debug output
      [*]     Support for backlight control
      < >   nVidia Riva support
      Console display driver support  --->
         --- VGA text console
        [*]   Enable Scrollback Buffer in System RAM
        (1024)  Scrollback Buffer Size (in KB)
        ---   Video mode selection support
        <*> Framebuffer Console support

Furthermore I'll be using a graphical boot splash screen, so I'll need Ramdisk support (initrd) for gensplash to work properly.

[*] Block devices  --->
  --- Block devices
  <*>   RAM disk support
  (16)    Default number of RAM disks
  (4096)  Default RAM disk size (kbytes)
  (1024)  Default RAM disk block size (bytes)

The rest of the system will be using ALSA for the sound card (with oss simulation), and the proper CPU, IDE, etc drivers.

A basis Gentoo without X.

/etc/make.conf:

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"

CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
USE="-X mmx sse sse2 unicode a52 aac aalib alsa cddb -doc dv \
     dvd encode ftp gif jpeg lirc live mmxext mp2 mp3 png pnm quicktime \
     radio rar rtc srt tga theora v4l v4l2 vorbis win32codecs x264 xvid \
     mpeg flac mp3rtp jpeg2k tiff ogg truetype fbcon ggi"

MAKEOPTS="-j2"

GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.uni-c.dk/pub/gentoo/"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"

VIDEO_CARDS="vesa nvidia"
LIRC_DEVICES="mceusb mceusb2"

====SVGALib==== svgalib-1.9.25 only works with the 2.6.22 kernel, not the 2.6.23.
A fix is in the pipeline (as of Dec. 17th 2007) but not in the ebuild yet. <code> emerge -va svgalib </code>

The

LIRC_DEVICES="mceusb mceusb2"

from the make.conf file defines which IR receiver to use.

emerge -va lirc
rc-update add lircd default
irw # Run this and press the remote to test the settings.

The lirc deamon only seem to work with the 2.6.23 kernel, not the 2.6.22!

Compile it with fbcon, directfb and svga and ggi useflags.
Remember the fbcon useflag in DirectFB. The ggi useflag enables vesa outputmode.

emerge -va mplayer