[menno]

Is it just me or is this box in no way getting a gigabit connection on the latest OE (all final gotham .1)
Whatever i try with ethtool only 100 mbit full duplex does it! ((

[trick420]

nothing to do with HDMI vs DisplayPort.

just to be clear, you are downloading the OpenELEC 4.0.4 Generic x86_64 tar file, decompressing, then running the createinstallstick utility to set up the USB stick?

Yes, that's exactly what I did... I did it in both OSx and in Win7 with the exact same result. Right now I'm writing a Chromium OS image to a drive to try to see if I can get anywhere with that.

I'm starting to think that this is a monitor issue - I'm trying to go DisplayPort to HDMI into a Samsung SyncMaster T24. It's acting like it can't adjust to display the resolution properly or something...

Ok, well, I put Chromium on another flash drive, and it has loaded fine. So I wonder if the XBMC install GUI is loading a resolution that my monitor can't display? Very odd.

[Matt Devo]

Is it just me or is this box in no way getting a gigabit connection on the latest OE (all final gotham .1)
Whatever i try with ethtool only 100 mbit full duplex does it! ((

I'm getting GigE no problem. Just transferred a multi-GB file over at ~93MB/sec

Ok, well, I put Chromium on another flash drive, and it has loaded fine. So I wonder if the XBMC install GUI is loading a resolution that my monitor can't display? Very odd.

As far as I can tell, it's querying the monitor via EDID and setting the preferred resolution - in my case that's 1900x1200p@60Hz

[jerndl]

Is it just me or is this box in no way getting a gigabit connection on the latest OE (all final gotham .1)
Whatever i try with ethtool only 100 mbit full duplex does it! ((

I just copied a 2 GB file from a USB 3.0 external hard drive on the Chromebox to my Windows 8.1 PC and got about 90 MBytes/s. So I am definitely getting a gigibit connection.

Jay

[trick420]

Is it just me or is this box in no way getting a gigabit connection on the latest OE (all final gotham .1)
Whatever i try with ethtool only 100 mbit full duplex does it! ((

I'm getting GigE no problem. Just transferred a multi-GB file over at ~93MB/sec

Ok, well, I put Chromium on another flash drive, and it has loaded fine. So I wonder if the XBMC install GUI is loading a resolution that my monitor can't display? Very odd.

As far as I can tell, it's querying the monitor via EDID and setting the preferred resolution - in my case that's 1900x1200p@60Hz

So I went back to openelec and downloaded the disk image and put it on my USB stick the old fashioned way instead of using the installer creator... This time I selected the thumb drive, and it boots to an 8-bit looking openelec installation screen. When I select "install" the screen goes black and again I'm dead in the water... I can get to this install/live run selection screen every time now.

[Matt Devo]

So I went back to openelec and downloaded the disk image and put it on my USB stick the old fashioned way instead of using the installer creator... This time I selected the thumb drive, and it boots to an 8-bit looking openelec installation screen. When I select "install" the screen goes black and again I'm dead in the water... I can get to this install/live run selection screen every time now.

the OpenELEC image is for UEFI systems, not legacy BIOS systems.

[trick420]

So I went back to openelec and downloaded the disk image and put it on my USB stick the old fashioned way instead of using the installer creator... This time I selected the thumb drive, and it boots to an 8-bit looking openelec installation screen. When I select "install" the screen goes black and again I'm dead in the water... I can get to this install/live run selection screen every time now.

the OpenELEC image is for UEFI systems, not legacy BIOS systems.

Ok, but I didn't do the 'update legacy bios' option as it was marked for dual boot systems.

I don't understand the difference between UEFI and Legacy to know what to do with that information. Are you saying I need to update the Legacy bios?

[Matt Devo]

Ok, but I didn't do the 'update legacy bios' option as it was marked for dual boot systems.

I don't understand the difference between UEFI and Legacy to know what to do with that information. Are you saying I need to update the Legacy bios?

not at all, I was simply stating that the OpenELEC image download will not work on the ChromeBox, as it is meant for a UEFI system, and the ChromeBox (with my Coreboot firmware) is legacy BIOS only. The updated legacy BIOS that is necessary for dual-booting systems with the stock firmware is also a part of my Coreboot firmware, so it does not need to be updated separately.

TL;DR - you need the regular (not image) version of the OpenELEC installer.

[trick420]

Ok, but I didn't do the 'update legacy bios' option as it was marked for dual boot systems.

I don't understand the difference between UEFI and Legacy to know what to do with that information. Are you saying I need to update the Legacy bios?

not at all, I was simply stating that the OpenELEC image download will not work on the ChromeBox, as it is meant for a UEFI system, and the ChromeBox (with my Coreboot firmware) is legacy BIOS only. The updated legacy BIOS that is necessary for dual-booting systems with the stock firmware is also a part of my Coreboot firmware, so it does not need to be updated separately.

TL;DR - you need the regular (not image) version of the OpenELEC installer.

Got it. Thanks for the clarification. So I'm going to table this until I get home tonight then and try again with my TV and an HDMI cable. I'm not convinced that this isn't a monitor issue as these T240's are probably 5-6 years old now.

Jeff

[trick420]

Ok, but I didn't do the 'update legacy bios' option as it was marked for dual boot systems.

I don't understand the difference between UEFI and Legacy to know what to do with that information. Are you saying I need to update the Legacy bios?

not at all, I was simply stating that the OpenELEC image download will not work on the ChromeBox, as it is meant for a UEFI system, and the ChromeBox (with my Coreboot firmware) is legacy BIOS only. The updated legacy BIOS that is necessary for dual-booting systems with the stock firmware is also a part of my Coreboot firmware, so it does not need to be updated separately.

TL;DR - you need the regular (not image) version of the OpenELEC installer.

Got it. Thanks for the clarification. So I'm going to table this until I get home tonight then and try again with my TV and an HDMI cable. I'm not convinced that this isn't a monitor issue as these T240's are probably 5-6 years old now.

Jeff

Ugh. Got home. Set it all up. Zero video output on HDMI. Black screen from the point I turn on the power. I left the Displayport cable at the office. I'm completely discouraged now. I think I'm going to return this to Amazon. My TV is around 2008 - is it possible that the HDMI isn't compatible?

[rukusx7]

Thanks, lot of helpful info in there. As someone not too familiar with Linux this does seem a bit daunting. Are there any benefits to running a full Linux distro vs OpenElec if I don't plan to use the box as a pc? Also I don't understand why video decoding has to be software, isn't the whole point to use the gpu for all decoding?

My brother bought himself a chromebox as well as one for myself. To pay him back, my mission was to turn the box from a chromebox into a standalone computer. I'm a huge XBMC fan, so these forums came naturally to me. I am coming at this from a different angle than yourself though, and I would recommend OpenELEC over this setup if you are looking for a sturdy stand-alone. On that note, I'm not sure why I have to choose software decoding in my setup and that might be a reason right there not to go my way. This could be due to how the Haswell processors intoduce a new frequency scaling method, which is being supported in the latest 3.14.* kernels, named intel pstate. I coould be just experiencing some bugs being worked out. I dont know what kernel OpenELEC is on.

[goldenrod]

Yes, I ran the script twice. I don't see anything when I try Ctrl L. I am able to change the boot options and boot into Chrome by default. I'm just not sure why I don't see anything on the screen when booting to OpenELEC.

Update: Plugged the Chromebox into a Dell monitor (1920x1080) and had the same problem, so I don't think it's an HDMI handshaking issue. I'm stumped.

this isn't the same issue others are reporting, but even if it were, the screen should refresh as soon as OE loads. Hit me up on Google chat/hangouts and I'll walk you thru a few things to check

Thanks to some help from Matt, my dualboot Chromebox is now humming along. OpenELEC is fantastically fast on this device, and audio works great for all varieties, including hi-res multichannel FLAC.

[Matt Devo]

Ugh. Got home. Set it all up. Zero video output on HDMI. Black screen from the point I turn on the power. I left the Displayport cable at the office. I'm completely discouraged now. I think I'm going to return this to Amazon. My TV is around 2008 - is it possible that the HDMI isn't compatible?

I can't imagine that's the case, particularly if you were able to get video with ChromeOS using the same cable/TV. There has to be something else going on here, but hard to track down since I can't reproduce it myself.

My brother bought himself a chromebox as well as one for myself. To pay him back, my mission was to turn the box from a chromebox into a standalone computer. I'm a huge XBMC fan, so these forums came naturally to me. I am coming at this from a different angle than yourself though, and I would recommend OpenELEC over this setup if you are looking for a sturdy stand-alone. On that note, I'm not sure why I have to choose software decoding in my setup and that might be a reason right there not to go my way. This could be due to how the Haswell processors intoduce a new frequency scaling method, which is being supported in the latest 3.14.* kernels, named intel pstate. I coould be just experiencing some bugs being worked out. I dont know what kernel OpenELEC is on.

OE 4.0.4 is on 3.14.5 I believe, and 4.0.5 will be using 3.15. There's an Intel/Mesa driver bug that seems to be hitting some people but not others - I've been unable to reproduce it myself w/full hardware decoding (even VC-1). Intel is aware of the issue and it might even be fixed, just hasn't propagated down into OE yet.

Thanks to some help from Matt, my dualboot Chromebox is now humming along. OpenELEC is fantastically fast on this device, and audio works great for all varieties, including hi-res multichannel FLAC.

Not sure what happened the first go around, but glad a factory reset + reloading OE fixed it. I'll look at the script and see where I can add some additional error checking to try and eliminate the issue in the future.

[teki4u]

not at all, I was simply stating that the OpenELEC image download will not work on the ChromeBox, as it is meant for a UEFI system, and the ChromeBox (with my Coreboot firmware) is legacy BIOS only. The updated legacy BIOS that is necessary for dual-booting systems with the stock firmware is also a part of my Coreboot firmware, so it does not need to be updated separately.

TL;DR - you need the regular (not image) version of the OpenELEC installer.

Got it. Thanks for the clarification. So I'm going to table this until I get home tonight then and try again with my TV and an HDMI cable. I'm not convinced that this isn't a monitor issue as these T240's are probably 5-6 years old now.

Jeff

Ugh. Got home. Set it all up. Zero video output on HDMI. Black screen from the point I turn on the power. I left the Displayport cable at the office. I'm completely discouraged now. I think I'm going to return this to Amazon. My TV is around 2008 - is it possible that the HDMI isn't compatible?

So just to make sure, you're using this installer right:
OpenELEC Stable - Generic x86_64 Version:4.0.4

Why don't you give Ubuntu a try

[Matt Devo]

So just to make sure, you're using this installer right:
OpenELEC Stable - Generic x86_64 Version:4.0.4

Why don't you give Ubuntu a try

there's no reason whatsoever that OpenELEC shouldn't work, or at the very least that the installer shouldn't work. Trying another OS isn't likely to help at this point