[mythtv-users] PVR-500 replacing WinTV, randomly rebooting

[Chris Rouch]

On 6/1/05, Marty Mastera <marty at m3resources.com> wrote:
>  
> Hello, 
>   
> I have been running Myth 0.17 on a Soyo K7VME mobo and a WinTV PCI card. 
> This system is normally only used as a backend for an xbox frontend.  I
> recently replaced the WinTV card with a PVR-500MCE.  All I did was remove
> the WinTV card and replace it with the PVR-500 card, then followed
> instructions to download ivtv 0.3.2s and configure it. 
>   
> I then removed the WinTV card from mythsetup and added two capture cards,
> one for each tuner on the 500.  All of the functionality is working good (ie
> I can watch live tv, record two shows at once, etc, etc) but the machine
> randomly reboots itself every so often.  It only seems to happen when one or
> more of the tuners are in use (ie during live TV) and seems to possibly
> happen more quickly if I change channels alot.  In general the audio is
> working great but it seems like on certain channels (or possibly on every
> channel but only right before it decides to reboot) I notice some slight
> audio distortion  I have heard of people having trouble with VIA chipsets,
> but I have read posts where people have had success with the KM400 chipset.
> I have tried the PVR-500 in a different slot, installed the newest BIOS,
> verifed that the reboots will occur whether or not the xbox is involved,
> tried to make sure things are using unique IRQs, etc...here are a couple of
> questions: 
>   
> 1) Can anyone tell me which modules should be loaded and running for a
> PVR-500?  I'm wondering if the sytem is still loading modules for the old
> WinTV card...I see references to bttv in the dmesg output. 

I have these in modprobe.conf (for NL PAL)

alias char-major-81 videodev
alias char-major-81-1 ivtv
alias char-major-81-2 ivtv
alias tveeprom tveeprom-ivtv
alias msp3400 msp3400-ivtv
options ivtv ivtv_std=2 tda9887=0
options cx25840 no_black_magic=1
alias tuner tuner-ivtv


But even if you're loading unneeded modules, it shouldn't cause you're
 system to crash. Two things I'd check:

Run memtest86 overnight (or some other longish period).

Check your powersupply. Maybe it doesn't give enough power for
whatever is in your system and this is triggered by the use of the
PVR500. I've no idea what 'enough' is BTW.

Regards,

Chris