Asus My Cinema U3100 Mini Linux Compatible USB DVB-T Tuner Vs. AverTV Volar HD Nano

My experience with Avermedia devices has mostly been a pleasant one. Well, on windows platforms at least. My last employer purchased a fleet of Avermedia PCMCIA DVB-T/Analogue/FM cards for the work laptops, for network monitoring purposes, and they were fantastic.

When I was looking for a DVB-T USB tuner for my private laptop, I recalled the tough time we gave the Avermedia devices and how well they worked. Seemed to me, getting another Avermedia device was a great idea so long as there was Linux support. Avermedia claims Linux support for their AVerTV Volar HD Nano, but in truth I have wasted many hours configuring computers, installing kernel modules, and make installs. Admittedly, if I had've compiled the first driver and left the computer alone, it would still be working. Unfortunately, I made the decision to upgrade the Dell E6500 from 10.04LTS to 11.04, tried to get the HD Nano working. Then bought a new Dell E6320 and tried to get the thing to work on 11.04 on it. I am partly to blame for the hours I have spent, however, if Avermedia manufactured a device that was compliant with linux out of the box, I would still be a happy customer.

Ubuntu 11.04 - Broken Superblock

What a shitfight. The E6320 has a standard charge and express charge mode. I prefer longer charge times for extended battery life. I entered the BIOS to ensure standard mode was selected. Reboot, and the /root is broken.

Bummer.

I grabbed the USB $7 OS I built earlier, booted and found this walkthrough. I'm really glad I had a USB build ready to go...

Because I'm paranoid about people deleting really useful information, I've copied the steps below... I did not write this. All credit to the original author.