[pvrusb2] Unexpected "Failed to configure cx23416"

[Mike Isely]

On Wed, 8 Aug 2007, Martin Carpella wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I have been using pvrusb2 together with vdr for almost a year now and 
> there never was a problem, until yesterday. Out of a sudden I keep 
> getting the following entries all over my syslog. I noticed the whole 
> issue as suddenly there were more and more artifacts in the recordings.
> 
> After some time the reading will fail because the device cannot recover 
> any longer.
> 
> Is this an indication that the device is about to die? Or is there 
> anything else I could do? I already tried cold-booting both the device 
> and the computer the device is attached to.
> 
> Thanks for any help!

   [...]

Those errors are happening because the mpeg encoder chip is becoming 
unresponsive.  That chip is itself another processor so it's probably 
crashing.  The driver is attempting to recover the situation by forcing 
the encoder into reset, reloading its firmware, and restarting it.  If 
this is happening repeatedly every few minutes (or more rapidly), then 
there's something wrong.

If nothing at all has changed in the surrounding software environment, 
then I'd suspect the hardware going bad - though this is the first time 
I've heard a report of this nature.

The mpeg encoder chip is the biggest heat generator inside the device.  
Maybe you are experiencing a thermal problem?  Has the ambient air 
temperature in the room gone up?  See if you can affect the symptoms by 
cooling the device down.  Set up a fan to blow air across the top of it.  
I'm not suggesting this as a solution but perhaps as a way to figure out 
the symptoms a little better.

I have heard of one other case in the past few years where a device died 
due to overheating.  These devices do get somewhat warm.  But in that 
case it was an unusual situation: The owner had put a small stack of PVR 
USB2 devices one on top of another and then entombed the whole array 
inside a closed unventilated box...

  -Mike


-- 
                        |         Mike Isely          |     PGP fingerprint
     Spammers Die!!     |                             | 03 54 43 4D 75 E5 CC 92
                        |   isely @ pobox (dot) com   | 71 16 01 E2 B5 F5 C1 E8
                        |                             |