[mythtv-users] PVR 350 + Myth 0.14 + ivtv 0.1.9

[Timon, John]

the ivtv driver is under huge transition.  There has been a lot of active
talk on the ivtv-devel list regarding stability and an enormouse effort to
improve the reliability of the tv-out.  Chris Kennedy has been regularily
releasing patches that are brining the 350 tv out to a more and more stable
option.  

I personally am running his patch version 28 (IIRC) without a single crash
or problem.

--
John Timon
Unix like TeePee no windows, no gates, Apache inside.


-----Original Message-----
From: Taylor Jacob [mailto:rtjacob at earthlink.net] 
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 11:22 PM
To: mythtv-users at mythtv.org
Subject: [mythtv-users] PVR 350 + Myth 0.14 + ivtv 0.1.9


I have been trying to no avial to get MythTV work stable with my PVR350. I
am using MythTV v0.14 from the website, along with the ivtv 0.1.9 drivers
from the sourceforge download.

Exact Versions are as follows:
Kernel - 2.4.23 (built from kernel.org not gentoo version) Gentoo Linux
MythTV - 0.14.20040123-1
ivtv: 0.1.9
IvtvFirmware file: pvr250_17_21288.exe

At first I was getting crashes all the time (20-40 minute intervals) on
MythTV when doing anything that used /dev/video16 (350 mpeg out device).
These crashes would result in /dev/fb0 being screwed up (see bottom for more
information) and require a reboot before I can get X to start back up
properly.  I thought at first it might be heat related, but I dismissed this
after taking the case top off, and I also had my 350 working much more
stable with v12 and v13.  (Meaning crashes always only needed me to restart
X and mythfrontend, not reboot).

I completed the following tests to determine if the issue was with the FB
device, 350 output device, or mythtv.

- Play MP3s over and over agian in mythmusic with no video playing overnight
- this worked just fine on an overnight trial of 12-14 hours. 
This should have just used /dev/fb0 and not /dev/video16.

- The next night I shutdown all of the myth processes and used dd to send a
.nuv file over and over again to /dev/video16.  This worked for around 12-14
hours uninterrupted.  This should have only used /dev/video16.

At this point I was stumped, and stepped away from teh problem for a week or
so. I then checked the firmware version I was using (at least in
/lib/modules). It turned out it was an older version, so i downloaded the
latest version and tried again.


Now I am seeing mythtv run more stable.. So far over a 4-5 hour period of
using it I have only had it crash once, but it is resulting in the /dev/fb0
still being screwed up such that I must re-start the pc to get it corrected.

This is the error I got from mythfrontend.. Are there any other logs I can
provide to be of some assistance?

----------------------------

bad newframes: -268376042 0 79742 78572
bad newframes: -268376042 0 79742 78572
bad newframes: -268376042 0 79742 78572
bad newframes: -268376042 0 79742 78572
bad newframes: -268376042 0 79742 78572
bad newframes: -268376042 0 79742 78572
bad newframes: -268376042 0 79742 78572
bad newframes: -268376042 0 79742 78572
bad newframes: -268376042 0 79742 78572
bad newframes: -268376042 0 79742 78572
bad newframes: -268376042 0 79742 78572
bad newframes: -268376042 0 79742 78572

and on and on and on...

----------------------------

After these types of crashes this is what I see when I used ivtvfbctl to
look at the state of the framebuffer..

----------------------------

Framebuffer state:
  Framebuffer state:       off
  Global alpha:            ENABLED
  Local alpha:             ENABLED
  Flicker reduction:       disabled
  Global alpha value:      -268376042
Active buffer:
  Offset:                  0xefafe816
  Maximum offset:          0x002c0800
  Horizontal stride:       -268376042 32-bit words
  Vertical lines:          -268376042 lines
  Coordinates (x, y):      -268376042, -268376042

/dev/fb0: IVTVFB_IOCTL_SET_ACTIVE_BUFFER failed (error: Success)

----------------------------

I also wanted to add that I love this project, and I want to thank everyone
involved for their hard work to get this thing off the ground.
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