[mythtv-users] Setting up SA3250HD and FireWire

[Kevin Kuphal]

jacob wrote:
> Ok, maybe something very obvious is eluding me, but I cannot get my SA3250HD
> to work reliably, with Myth or test-mpeg2. The work I've done so far amounts
> to:
>
> Plug in FireWire connections on the box and computer. plugreport gives:
>
> Host Adapter 0
> ==============
>
> Node 0 GUID 0x001692180d260000
> ------------------------------
> oMPR n_plugs=1, data_rate=2, bcast_channel=63
> oPCR[0] online=1, bcast_connection=0, n_p2p_connections=0
>         channel=0, data_rate=2, overhead_id=0, payload=146
> iMPR n_plugs=0, data_rate=2
>
> Node 1 GUID 0x0001080038030803
> ------------------------------
> libiec61883 error: error reading oMPR
> libiec61883 error: error reading iMPR
>
>     On the advice of my readings, I do 
>
> plugctl -n 0 oPCR[0].n_p2p_connections=1
>
> to setup p2p communication. I patched sa3250ch to use my vendor and device
> identifiers, as well as modifying the CTL_CMD1 calculation to use chn << 8.
> I've gotten it to come up once, exactly, and spit video, but attempting to
> change the channel blew it out of the water, and I haven't been able to get
> it that far again. Whenever I try and use it in Myth, I get strings of
>
> 2006-06-15 19:53:36.808
> RingBuf(/mnt/video/mythtv/recordings/1012_20060615195330.mpg): Invalid file
> (fd 20) when opening '/mnt/video/mythtv/recordings/1012_20060615195330.mpg'.
> 0 retries remaining.
>
> followed by strings of
>
> 2006-06-15 19:53:37.483
> RingBuf(/mnt/video/mythtv/recordings/1012_20060615195330.mpg) Error: Invalid
> file descriptor in 'safe_read()'
>
> both of which haven't been particularly illuminating via google. Myth
> supports the SA3250HD, so either it's completely fragile (mostly broken), or
> I'm missing something. I'm currently using Christian Marillat's packages for
> Debian/Sid i386, although I tried the SVN trunk with no more success. It's
> possible my problems stem from trying to tune 5C channels, in which case I'd
> be interested in people's methods for setting up their channel lists to
> exclude them. If someone has a working 3250 FireWire setup, I'd be very
> interested in how they got it set up. If I can get this working, I'll
> definitely add it to the Wiki.
>
>   
Have you gotten it to work reliably *outside* of Myth using the tuning 
commands and capturing the output to a file?

Kevin