[mythtv-users] Another n00b with a (simple?) problem

Derek Jennings derek at disposable.dnsalias.org
Sat Dec 11 19:33:48 UTC 2004


On Saturday 11 December 2004 18:16, Daniel Howell wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> New to the list and, as with many first time posters I imagine, having
> the typical problems. Not actually with MythTV itself (well, some minor
> little problems, but one thing at a time, eh?!). If these questions
> really need to be directed towards the ivtv mailing list, then fair
> enough - tell me to sod orf - but I figure most people here will be
> using the cards in the same way I'm planning to - ie. purely for mythtv.
> Well, I hope so anyway! Would appreciate any advice or guidance anyone
> could offer. First some hardware background :-
>
> XP2200 on Abit mATX motherboard
> Onboard VIA sound/network
> New Hauppauge PVR350
> New Hauppauge NOVA-T (DVB-T) card
> nVidia 5200 AGP
> Fedora Core 3
>
> Following Jarods guide, I've got all the latest patches and running the
> latest kernel, apt has been a wonderful friend and had saved me lots of
> hassle. The sound works, the nVidia card works, and the PVR350 works
> fine (I installed this first, by itself, to simplify matters).
>
> The NOVA-T card, however, is causing much more grief. I'm not getting
> and /dev/dvb device files appear, which from scouring on the internet
> seems to be a populat thing. Running the instdev.sh script creates them,
> but none of the created devices are valid - dvbtune, for example,
> doesn't pull anything valid from them. It seems obvious that the driver
> module isn't loading or initialising properly.
>
> The quick and simple question to ask to the list is, does anyone have a
> modprobe.conf that includes all the lines for running a PVR350 and NOVAT
> in the same machine (on FC3)?
>
> However I'd rather understand what all the bttv, ivtv, cx8800, etc
> drivers are actually for, and which ones are needed for each card - and
> how I load more than one, associate it with multiple cards, etc. At the
> moment, I'm hacking around trying multiple combinations but not really
> understanding what I'm doing - and I don't really want to be doing that,
> I'd rather what it all means. The commands (alias, install, etc) are
> fine - it's just the general structure of the file - for example...
>
> How does "char-major-81" relate to anything?! I mean, how does anyone
> know that's what's got to be entered?! What does it *mean*? 81-0 and
> 81-1 - is that referring to individual PCI instances of cards, or
> devices on a PCI card itself (encoder, decoder, tuner for example)?
>
> bttv, ivtv, cx8800 - is my understanding right here.... my current
> understanding is that bttv is for bt848 chips, of which the PVR350 uses
> it on the tuner only, so I need that. Cx8800 is for the connexant chips,
> of which the NOVAT has a couple, so I want that on the NOVA-T card.
> Finally, the ivtv driver is purely for the encoder/decoder on the PVR
> card (not the tuner). I've browsed so many sites now my mind is a mush
> of people saying one thing or another (or, in most cases, telling you to
> do something but not explaining why)...
>
> The options parameter - in particular "card" and "tuner" - where is this
> magical list of all the options?!
>
> Some lspci outputs/etc are here (save flooding the mail list) :-
>
> http://forums.kustompcs.co.uk/showpost.php?p=207362&postcount=23
>
> If there's anything I'm missing, please shout ;]
>
> All the best,
> Dan Howell
> Birmingham, UK

It looks like you have the latest Nova-T card using the Conexant chip set.
I have just been through the issue of getting drivers for this card.
I'm a Mandrake user, but it should be much the same for Fedora.

The driver you need is cx88-dvb  I do not know it it is in FC-3, but the 
procedure I used to insert it in my kernel is described here.
http://www.linuxtv.org/mailinglists/linux-dvb/2004/11-2004/msg00618.html

My modprobe.conf entry is
#Nova-T card with Conexant chipset
install dvb-nova-cx /sbin/modprobe videodev && { /sbin/modprobe 
dvb-core; /sbin/modprobe v4l1-compat; /sbin/modprobe 
v4l2-common; /sbin/modprobe video-buf
; /sbin/modprobe cx88-dvb; /bin/true; }


and my modprobe.preload contains
dvb-nova-cx

Good luck
derek


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