[mythtv-users] Re: How I solved my PVR-350 hard lockup problem

[Ryan Dalzell]

On Friday 11 March 2005 00:22, jerome lacoste wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 22:17:22 +0000, Ryan Dalzell <ryan at tullyroan.com> 
wrote:
> > Hi Guys,
> >
> > I just recently did some fiddling with my machine and - of course -
> > created severe havoc and much domestic turmoil for days afterwards. The
> > box would hard lock (hang) and have to be power cycled. Then it would
> > hang again. There is seemingly no pattern to when these would happen. I
> > could watch LiveTV for hours and then change channel and it would hang.
> >
> > I've fixed it now but I noticed plenty of other people having the same
> > very frustrating problem.
>
> I am part of those. I thought about the power supply.
>
> Just a question: your machine seems to be a simple front end, no
> tuner/DVB card, correct?

No it's a frontend and a slave backend, i.e. I'm using the 350 for 
recording.

> My board has *only*  the PVR350, a 160G hard disk, a USB wireless key
> and a slim CDROM which I almost never use. This should fit with the
> small power supply I am using.
>
> It still crashed when I only had the disk and the tuner, no USB and no
> CDROM.

So take the disk out next!

And don't use a 60W power supply, use a 90W power supply at least.

> On the other side, many people believe the problem could be related to
> DMA.
>
> There's a thread about that here:
>
> http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=60131&START
>PAGE=1#391672

I did read about this during my time in purgatory, and I reckon there 
probably is a dma bug in the south bridge (to go along with all the other 
bugs). But, I have a stable 350 in a Epia-M 10k board and so do others. I 
used to have a 80GB hard drive in this box and it ran stable for about six 
months (I guess the total power draw was just about managable for my 90W 
supply).

So I don't think that bug is the showstopper you think it is. Of course I 
could be wrong.

> I am also seeing a lot of DMA errors in the logs. You can check the
> ivtv-dev list for a post from me and other people with simlar issue.

Admittedly, I don't get these.

> If you have time, could you try to put the disk back, but disable DMA
> (in BIOS and in OS)?

I did try disabling DMA on the hard drive and it didn't solve my lockup 
problem.

Cheers,
-Ryan