[mythtv-users] lirc_zilog troubles with WinTV-Go (similar to PVR-150)

Christian Monkman c.b.monkman at gmail.com
Wed Sep 29 03:39:44 UTC 2010


Greetings, everyone.

A few days ago I upgraded a MythTV installation that installed by
using the MythTV packages on top of Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid). It served
me well for a couple of years but the software was beginning to show
its age. I decided to upgrade releases to Mythbuntu 10.04 using a USB
boot stick. I performed a clean install, saying goodbye to a couple of
dozen episodes of The Simpsons I'd never gotten around to watching. ;)

The main hardware doing the essential job of capturing TV, changing
channels on a STB and listening to the bundled remote
(http://lirc.sourceforge.net/remotes/hauppauge/PVR-350.jpg) is an old
Hauppauge WinTV-Go-plus-or-something. It has a combination IR receiver
and blaster which worked very well under Ubuntu 8.10 once I'd followed
the excellent write ups on Mark's Braindump blog
(http://www.blushingpenguin.com/mark/blog/?p=24), which means the IR
blaster worked using Mark's lirc_pvr150 module and
haup-ir-blaster.bin. Google led me to the discovery that lirc_pvr150
has been replaced with lirc_zilog. Hoping that my non-pvr150 that used
to act like a pvr150 would be brought to life again, I followed these
instructions on Bob's Notepad
(http://notepad.bobkmertz.com/2010/06/pvr-150-ir-blaster-on-mythbuntu-1004.html),
and the patch and compile complete successfully, but I have had no
luck getting the lirc_zilog module to detect my RX and TX devices and
load the firmware.

The haup-ir-blaster.bin file from Mark's page is stored in /lib/firmware/

here's lspci -nn after bootup:
03:06.0 Multimedia video controller [0400]: Brooktree Corporation
Bt878 Video Capture [109e:036e] (rev 11)
03:06.1 Multimedia controller [0480]: Brooktree Corporation Bt878
Audio Capture [109e:0878] (rev 11)

The model numbers printed on a sticker on the tuner part of the card
are: Win-TV NTSC 44981 rev E199
And on the back of the board is a barcode and the numbers: 4405  8311767

Inserting the module via "modprobe lirc_zilog debug=1" causes the
following to appear in /var/log/dmesg and no lirc devices are created
under /dev :

[ 1545.372717] lirc_dev: IR Remote Control driver registered, major 61
[ 1545.382931] lirc_zilog: Zilog/Hauppauge IR driver initializing
[ 1545.384922] lirc_zilog: initialization complete


Output of lsmod:

Module                  Size  Used by
lirc_zilog             13245  0
lirc_dev                8890  1 lirc_zilog
nls_cp437               4919  3
cifs                  248081  5
snd_intel8x0           25588  0
snd_ac97_codec        100646  1 snd_intel8x0
ac97_bus                1002  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_bt87x               9735  0
tuner_simple           13577  1
tuner_types            14233  1 tuner_simple
snd_pcm_oss            35308  0
snd_mixer_oss          13746  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                70662  4
snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_bt87x,snd_pcm_oss
tuner                  20412  1
snd_seq_dummy           1338  0
tvaudio                24273  0
tda7432                 3953  0
snd_seq_oss            26726  0
snd_seq_midi            4557  0
snd_rawmidi            19056  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_midi_event      6003  2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq                47263  6
snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_timer              19098  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device          5700  5
snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
i82875p_edac            3314  0
fbcon                  35102  71
tileblit                2031  1 fbcon
font                    7557  1 fbcon
bitblit                 4707  1 fbcon
softcursor              1189  1 bitblit
msp3400                26782  0
bttv                  111669  0
v4l2_common            15431  5 tuner,tvaudio,tda7432,msp3400,bttv
videodev               34361  6 tuner,tvaudio,tda7432,msp3400,bttv,v4l2_common
v4l1_compat            13251  1 videodev
ir_common              38875  1 bttv
i2c_algo_bit            5028  1 bttv
videobuf_dma_sg        10782  1 bttv
videobuf_core          16356  2 bttv,videobuf_dma_sg
nvidia               9961216  28
vga16fb                11385  1
edac_core              37331  3 i82875p_edac
snd                    54148  11
snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_bt87x,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
vgastate                8961  1 vga16fb
btcx_risc               3624  1 bttv
tveeprom               11102  1 bttv
soundcore               6620  1 snd
snd_page_alloc          7076  3 snd_intel8x0,snd_bt87x,snd_pcm
psmouse                63245  0
serio_raw               3978  0
intel_agp              24177  1
agpgart                31724  2 nvidia,intel_agp
shpchp                 28820  0
lp                      7028  0
parport                32635  1 lp
ohci1394               26950  0
usbhid                 36110  1
hid                    67032  1 usbhid
floppy                 53016  0
ieee1394               81181  1 ohci1394
sata_sil                6959  1
e1000                  97396  0


I have also tried downloading and building lirc-0.8.7 and loading the
modules lirc_dev and lirc_i2c from the build folders using insmod with
this output in dmesg. No lirc devices appear under /dev

[ 1886.502991] lirc_dev: IR Remote Control driver registered, major 61
[ 1900.866558] ivtv: Start initialization, version 1.4.1
[ 1900.867143] ivtv: End initialization
[ 1900.897687] cx88/0: cx2388x v4l2 driver version 0.0.7 loaded


I realize this card is neither a real PVR-150 nor an HD-PVR, which is
what the lirc_zilog module seems to be aimed most at serving, but my
cheap WinTV-Go used to work *great* with the pvr150 module and
firmware. Am I just dreaming by hoping to get this IR setup working
under Mythbuntu 10.04? Should I go looking for a newer capture card
and IR bundle? Any suggestions easily obtained in Canada?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.


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