[mythtv-users] PVR-350 (hard) lockups, Fixed!

Fri Mar 11 21:23:51 UTC 2005

Hey Kenneth,

Thanks for this post I have been having the same problems with my
PVR250.  I have been considering buying a new mobo/cpu to try and
solve the problem.  Could you send me links to the hardware you
bought, mobo and ram in particular?  Also, did you use the retail fan
on the processor and if so how loud is it?  I have that HDD by the way
and I agree it is awesome.

Thanks a bunch,
Aaron

On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 15:50:02 -0500, Maverick <mavantix at gmail.com> wrote:
> OK, since there seems to be a ton of people on the list lately
> complaining about the lockup issues with PVR-350's, using TVout, I
> figured I'd do a little writeup on how we fixed it, and the things we
> tried before "fixing" it.
> 
> About a month ago, a friend of mine and I both bought PVR-350's, and
> put them in "junk" computers I had lying around. One computer was a
> Dell GX110 (P3-667, 256MB, Intel Chipset), the other being a generic
> Celeron 533, 256MB, VIA Chipset (not sure which model/version chipset,
> probably KT133).
> 
> Now, by hard lockup, this is what happened for us, FF or REW a bunch,
> Watch TV for awhile, or view the Recorded shows with the mini preview,
> the system would just freeze. Having to reboot w/ the reset switch. If
> we did it quick enough, we can bring the machines back to life by
> causing the NIC (or maybe other PCI device?) to interrupt. So ping
> flooding the NIC, or hitting enter at the SSH prompt on the box worked
> magic.
> 
> As far as I'm concerned, ivtv-fb, the IVTV Frame Buffer (aka ivtv-osd
> in dmesg) has a dma/irq problem on older or faulty hardware. I'm not
> sure if it gets suck in a loop, or some sort of event wait condition,
> who knows. What I do know is, it works fine on "different" hardware,
> yes, that was our fix!
> 
> My friend upgraded from the 533/VIA board to Compaq ATX board I had
> laying around, it is a Athlon 600. He has since had no problems.
> 
> I decided to buy a new board, because my Dell P3 system worked without
> lockups long enough to impress me on how great MythTV is. I bought a
> Silverstone LC11, Chaintech Summit 7NIF2, Athlon XP 2700, 512MB DDR
> 400?, SAMSUNG SP1614N 8MB 160GB HD (SUPER QUIET!!), and absolutely
> love it! It works fine, no PVR-350 lockups. I'm still using the
> PVR-350's TVout, but I bought the board based on Jarod's use of it in
> his "Standard Definition Slave Backend and Playback System", and I
> intend on using the onboard nVidia TVout at some point. (BTW, thanks
> for the recommendation Jarod!)
> 
> We also installed KnoppMyth R5A12 on both.
> 
> So, two fixed boxes, both got different hardware, but one was still an
> old POS. I'm guessing that Compaq board just doesn't have the problems
> the other two boards we where using did.
> 
> Now, the list of stuff we tried that didn't work:
> 
> * Upgrade R4V5 to Kernel 2.6.10 from debs (lot of work, no effect,
> other than Tuner type 47 was now recognized properly)
> 
> * Disable APCI (noapci in boot loader), no effect.
> 
> * Disable Power Management in BIOS, no effect.
> 
> * Try almost every ivtv version at the time, 0.2.x and 0.3.x, no effect.
> 
> * Use another IDE controller instead of the onboard one. This fixed
> the lockup problem on my Dell P3, but the controller sharing the PCI
> bus with the PVR-350 made the system unwatchable (frame rate wise)
> 
> * Disable DMA on the HD I/O. It has the effect of slowing the box to a
> crawl, beyond that, didn't "fix" the problem, because the box itself
> was too slow...
> 
> * Force different tuner types in ivtv, no effect except lack of signal, etc.
> 
> * Remove non-essential PCI devices, disable anything that could
> interrupt on the bus. Un fortunately, didn't really have much effect.
> 
> * Rearrange IRQ's in the BIOS, this might be the one hope some systems
> have. It seems some of these older systems won't hard lock if the
> PVR-350 is NOT sharing an IRQ with another system device. My Dell P3
> insisted on forcing the onboard video and the PVR-350 to share an IRQ,
> if you changed one, it changed the other. Interestingly enough, it
> worked fine prior to a BIOS upgrade, so maybe the BIOS upgrade was
> what forced them to share... If your can put your PVR-350 on it's own
> IRQ, it may help. lspci -v will show you what devices are on what
> IRQ's.
> 
> * Run X Windows on a monitor, and use Myth's PVR-350 TVout checkbox,
> so just TV is on the TV. This fixes the problem, probably because
> ivtv-fb is no longer used for X, but it's annoying to have a little
> monitor next to your 65" TV... :)
> 
> I spent about $650 for my hardware (newegg.com + pcalchemy.com), and
> my friend used stuff I had laying around, just bought the 350.
> 
> I took a bunch of pictures of the Silverstone LC11 install, if anyone
> is interested, let me know. I might put up a page with install
> notes... It's a wonderful case, and I'd recommend to anyone wanting a
> quiet, modern, non-computer looking device in their home theater.
> 
> Hope this helps someone,
> -Kenneth
> 
> 
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