[mythtv-users] SA3250HD Firewire -- A New User's Findings

Benton Roberts benton at panix.com
Sat Apr 28 21:56:53 UTC 2007


(part three - The Old Man and the C)

Hi, Mythologists.

This third part of "SA3250HD Firewire -- A New User's Findings"
addresses the issue of independently controlling two different SA3250s
using the firewire connection. I also give the hardware and software
specs for the combination front/backend computer on which the issues
raised in this thread were documented.

OK, as of April 2007, the sa3250ch channel changing script on
cvs.myththv.org does not support multiple SA3250s. It just iterates over
the all devices on firewire port zero, until it finds one that matches
one of it's known SA3250 hardware IDs, then sends that device the
commands. So I dusted off my C, and added the [-p PORT] and [-n NODE]
settings to this tool. Now it works fine for independently controlling
my two SA3250s, whether they're on the same bus, or on different ones.
Should I submit this improvement to contrib, MythTV project leaders?

Source code for the modified sa3250ch channel changer:
    http://bentonroberts.com/personal/media-server/code/sa3250ch-BR.c


And finally, for the reference purposes of those interested in the many
issues raised in this thread (or for the teminally nerdy), here are the
specs for my first Myth system:

HARDWARE TABLE:
Component         Manufacturer/Model       Detail
---------------------------------------------------------------
Case              Silverstone SG01-BW      4 rear slot panels
Power supply      Silverstone ST50EF-Plus  Full ATX
Heat sink         Silverstone NT06-LITE    Cools CPU with PS fan
Motherboard       ASUS M2NPV-VM	Socket AM2 SATA RAID
Processor         AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Windsor 2.0GHz Dual-core
RAM               Kingston ValueRAM 1GB    (2 x 512MB) DDR2 800
Hard disks        WDigital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 2 x 250GB SATA
Analog A/V input  Hauppauge PVR-500 1 PCI slot, 2 analog encoders
Optical drive     LITE-ON 20X DVD+R 8X dual-layer dvd+/-r(w)
Extra firewire    CompUSA PCI 1394 (P/N:274516) VT6306 chipset
Card reader       nMediaPC ZE-C38 universal memory-card reader
KB / mouse        Logitech Cordless Desktop EX110
IR control        CommandIR Mini            up to 4 emitters

SOFTWARE TABLE:
Function           Product / Package        Version
---------------------------------------------------------------
OS                 Fedora-base              6
kernel + firewire  Fedora-base              2.6.20-1.2933.fc6
firewire video     Fedora libiec61883       1.1.0-1.fc6
MythTV             ATrpms mythtv-suite      0.20-154.fc6.at


Conclusion:
Well, that's all for this epic missive. I hope it will be helpful to
many other new users, and of course I hope that someone out there will
have both the patience to read all this, and the knowledge to help me
(and all those others) along the way to media nirvana.

Happy hacking!
- benton






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