[LIVE] HOW-TO install XBMC Live on Acer Aspire Revo - The Complete Guide for Newbies

[burgemaster]

Here is a little guide of everything that I have learnt when setting up my Revo, all the info was gathered from various posts on here
Just thought id put it all together as if i had found this post i would have saved me HOURS !!! lol..

1) Add an extra 1gig of RAM: (Crucial 1GB DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Laptop Memory)
You need to unfortunetly viod the warrenty sticker and remove the one philips head screw to fit the ram. Once this is out, you can then pull off the whole side panel....



2) Bios Settings:
Enter the Bios and disable "Use RevoBoot", then set the dedicated Memory to the GPU from AUTO to CUSTOM and then below set it to 512meg

3) Addings Nvidia Drivers to the XBMC-Live Installer:
First you need to download XBMC-Live and then add the Nvidia drivers to the ISO. You can either do this yourself with an iso editer (UltraISO) or download this ISO of XBMC Live 9.04.1 with the updated NVIDIA.185_18_14 drivers allready added: http://www.fusedimages.com/xbmc.zip (thanks Duplo)

4) Installing XBMC Live on the Revo:
As the revo has no optical drive, you will have to buy/borrow a USB Drive. Burn your ISO to a CDR using Imgburn (http://www.imgburn.com/ and then load into the USB drive.
Turn on the Revo and when it is booting press F12 to load the boot menu. Choose your USB Drive.
When XBMC Live boots you will see options to either run it from the CDR or install to the HARD DRIVE or a USB device.

I choose to install to hard drive as there was nothing else worth keeping on the revo drive. Choose your Hard drive, and then Yes to confirm.

** You are confirming that EVERYTHING will be erased from the hard drive / USB stick you have choosen!

After it has installed, your revo will turn off, unplug the USB drive and reboot to XBMC (fingers crossed)

5) Video and Audio Settings in XBMC:
XBMC should load up nicely and your Revo should correctly report the GPU as ION

VIDEO: Setting > Video > Play:
Set Render to - VDPAU

AUDIO: Settings > system > audio hardware >

Audio output (digital) - Digital
Audio output device - hdmi
Passthrough output device - hdmi
Downmix multichannel audio to stereo - ON

If you would like to Setup your remote control or get the menu sounds working you will need to edit a couple of files.
These files can be accessed by an FTP client. I used WinSCP on a windows PC.. You enter your IP and username and password (I set a secure root password) and then browse the files.
So setup the menu sounds create a blank notepad file and enter into it:

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave {
pcm "hdmi"
}
}

save it as asoundrc.txt
Then FTP it over to you revo, into USER / XBMC folder. Once its in there rename it to .asoundrc

Good Luck

[gurkburk]

Regarding step 4.
If you don't have an CD/DVD USB drive, you can create an bootable USB stick with this program. http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

[burgemaster]

Originally Posted by gurkburk

Regarding step 4.
If you don't have an CD/DVD USB drive, you can create an bootable USB stick with this program. http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

I tried that a few times, i was able to make a USB installer, but when the option to select Install to HD/USB was selected it just hung, you could run xbmc from the usb though if you changed all instances of =CDR to =USB in the ini

[Pete_London]

I've had no end of trouble with USB booting on my Revos, so I purchased a USB Blu-Ray drive.... much easier to do things now.

[Pete_London]

I have tried to install XBMC live on 2 different Revos with 2 different firmwares and the installer couldn't see the drive either time.

USB drives were visible, but not the SATA drive. I tried with and without RevoBoot enabled in the BIOS.

One of my Revos came with Windows, the other with Linux.

Yet I can install a minimal Ubuntu install to both of them.

Has anybody else experienced this?

Pete

[Pete_London]

while I'm passing comment... if you set the Audio Output Device to plughw:0,3 instead of hdmi it will fix the mono issue as well as the MP3 speed issue.

Cheers,

Pete

[elupus]

setting the audio output to anything but default will kill channel reordering thou...

[Pete_London]

Originally Posted by Pete_London

I have tried to install XBMC live on 2 different Revos with 2 different firmwares and the installer couldn't see the drive either time.

USB drives were visible, but not the SATA drive. I tried with and without RevoBoot enabled in the BIOS.

One of my Revos came with Windows, the other with Linux.

Yet I can install a minimal Ubuntu install to both of them.

OK.. so it seems this is only the case when trying to install from a USB Key. When I try it from a USB CD drive it works fine....

[galleren]

I'm having some trouble installing XBMC Live (using the image linked by burgemaster) via a USB Flash stick.

After booting up the initial screen (where you select if you want to load XBMC Live with Nvidia, Ati drivers etc or install to HDD) it just sorta hangs with a blinking cursor at the top left of the screen. This happens after selecting either to load XBMC Live or install to HDD. The XBMC logo then appears for a little while, then a black screen with just the cursor blinking.

Any suggestions?

[burgemaster]

yes mate, burn it to CDR and then use a external drive.
As i said above t doesnt seem to work to install from USB