[pvrusb2] pvrusb2 vs. em8300

[Mike Isely]

On Wed, 15 Feb 2006, Roger J. Allen wrote:

> On Sun, 12 Feb 2006, Michael Roitzsch wrote:
>
>> Hi Mike,
>> 
>> I reported this problem already, but this was a long time ago, so let me
>> refresh the caches: I have a pvrusb2 which somehow collides with an MPEG
>> decoder card I have. The card is a DXR3 (aka Hollywood+) with the em8300
>
> I have a Creative Dxr3 which I have not tried to use at the same time as
> the pvrusb2 until now.
>
> My Dxr3 seems to be working and my pvrusb2 still can record.  I have not
> done a lot of testing, but both tv-out and dxr3view overlay seem to work
> from the Dxr3.

This is what I would expect to hear, since in theory neither device has 
anything to do with the other.  But that doesn't help Michael's situation 
:-(


>
>> kernel module. The card is I2C based just like the pvrusb2. What happens
>> is that the pvrusb2 does not emit any audio when the em8300 driver is
>> loaded. If
>
> Does the pvrusb2 display video?
>
> If it is just an audio problem, are you trying to use the analog line-out
> or the AC3 audio from the Dxr3?

The audio and video are combined together inside the device hardware 
itself; what comes out of the driver is the mpeg2 stream exactly as the 
device generated it.  If there is something interfering with that stream 
then I'd expect that neither audio nor video will work.  If on the other 
hand one or the other is missing but not both then the streaming pathway 
MUST be working correctly and the problem has to do with I2C control of 
one of the chips in the device.


>
>> I prevent the em8300 module from loading and power-cycle the pvrusb2,
>> everything works fine (latest driver snapshot). But when both devices get
>
> What program are you using to tell if the pvrusb2 is working fine?
>
>> their drivers, the pvrusb2 is silent.
>> 
>> I have not investigated the issue until today, since I had a different
>> problem with my Ubuntu not liking the em8300 driver for other reasons. I
>> wanted to fix that first to make sure the pvrusb2 problem is not related
>> to that. Today I got things sorted out and headed back to the pvrusb2. Of
>> course
>
> Did you get the em8300 to work without a pvrusb2 attached?
>
> tv-out and/or overlay?
>
> analog and/or ac3?
>
>> it still does not cooperate with that other driver. I grabbed two logs:
>> one with the em8300 driver in place (that's the broken one) and one
>> without the em8300 driver (that's the working one). From what I can see,
>> the firmware1 is not loaded in the broken case. Do you have any idea what
>> might be going on here and what further data I could provide?
>> 
>
> I try to remember to power off the pvrusb2 long enough for it to
> discharge it's capacitors whenever I reboot the PC.

The device hardware does not have any kind of elaborate power supply. 
Not a lot of capacitance (which is probably why it doesn't take kindly to 
power brownouts while the host PC is otherwise unaffected).  I've not seen 
any kind of minimum "power off interval" needed here.  Basically so long 
as the device loses power long enough to force a controller reset (which 
isn't long at all), then everything else will be reinitialized anyway.


>
> My Dxr3 is an NTSC model that I bought on 06/15/2000.  It is using
> analog audio.  This one has the adv7175 chip instead of the bt865.
>
> This is running under Fedora Core 4.
> Kernel 2.6.15-1.1831_FC4
> pvrusb2-mci-20060209
> em8300-0.15.2.tar.gz
> mythtv-0.18.1
> xine-0.99.4
>
> I'll attach my dmesg output.  It shows the pvrusb2 startup, a few
> lines of:
>
> i2c_adapter i2c-0: Transaction error!
>
> and then the em8300 and adv717x modules start and load their firmware.

?!???  Where is that message coming from?  It isn't coming from the 
pvrusb2 driver.

    [...]

   -Mike

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