Broadcom decoder card on fit-pc2 platforms

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vtailor
Posts: 229
Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2012 6:54 pm

Broadcom decoder card on fit-pc2 platforms

Post by vtailor »

The mini pci-express sockets on the back of the fit-pc2 circuit boards accept Broadcom BCM70012 and BCM70015 video decoder boards when the wifi cards are removed. These are half and full height cards, and the wifi card hold-downs can be adjusted for half and full height. It may even be that the same circuitry that indicates wireless lan activity works to indicate decoder activity.

Here is the irony of the situation: Under Linux and Windows, the decoder cards have been superceded so they really don't do anything when you install them, even with the native Windows driver or the staging BCM70014 Linux kernel module. (The Linux driver source code no longer is compilable for 3.x kernels, but the library and gstreamer plugin are.)

Under Apple OS, however, the Apple kext kernel modules have been kept up to date so even today there is a lively internet business going on for knowledgable Apple owners in retrofitting old Apple television-set boxes with Broadcom cards which are then used to decode Apple OS flash and other streaming video formats to make up for the deficiencies in the D525 atom cpu used in that box.

What all the above is leading up to is a recommendation that skilled fit-pc2 owners who want earnestly to void their warrantees by replacing the wifi card with a BCM70014 card can contemplate for themselves what the world would be like if they could get the psb_gfx direct rendering support in Linux augmented by the Broadcom decoding support. There may yet be some of that support available in Mint Linux streaming video software, which was tied to Ubuntu work in keeping owners of those cards happy.

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