[mythtv-users] Feature Request for Poorly Functioning Video Card

Dan Marks dmarks at nucleus.nb.uiuc.edu
Sun Aug 10 23:01:53 EDT 2003


I have a feature request for "mythbackend."  Please consider it,
though it is truly inelegant and will probably turn your stomach.

Occassionally, mythbackend on my computer will crash because of the
flaky video capture card driver.  I have an nForce 1 motherboard with
Athlon XP 2100+ processor, WinTV BT-848 based capture card, 60 GB
western digital hard drive.  I get kernel messages that look like
this:

bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=1adf7810
bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=1adf7810
bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=1adf7810
bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=1adf7810
bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=1adf7810
bttv0: aiee: error loops
bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=19728014
bttv0: aiee: error loops
bttv0: resetting chip
bttv0: unloading

Which is accompanied by VIDIOCSYNC errors from mythbackend.  I have
tried to play with the bttv module options (including gbuffers) and
modifying the driver itself to make it more stable, but nothing
seems to help.  The problem is intermittent so I doubt I'll ever
be able to fix it.

Could you add a feature that, if for some reason it got like 30
VIDIOCSYNC errors in 30 seconds or something like that, it would close
the bttv driver, unload the kernel module, reload it, and reinitialize
the driver?  Once the bttv driver says "resetting chip," or "aiee
error loops" it seems like it's all over and the module must be
unloaded/loaded to restore behavior.  It would be nice if mythbackend
could do this, automatically, rather than come home and find out my
program wasn't recorded, and I have to reinitiailize it manually.
Maybe it could be an option instead of automatic?

Thanks!

Dan



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