I am writing this, though I rarely participate in on-line
discourse, because I think MythTV is a seriously killer app
and that it could really make an application that would bring
Linux and free software to a lot of people if it could be
installed reliably. I am very excited about MythTV so that
is why I hope others can benefit from my experience.
My background is a long time Linux user (since Linux 0.98pl5). I have
been trying to build a cool looking entertainment appliance out of a
Linux box, and MythTV seems like the perfect centerpiece of it.
Incidentally, my computer is an ASUS nForce A7N266-VM MB w/ 512 MB of
RAM, Athlon 2100+ XP processor, 60 GB Western Digital Hard Drive, and
a old BT-848 based Hauppage WinTV card (though I also bought an
Avermedia Studio card that I did not have a lot of luck with). I am
trying to replace my TiVo with a computer with a CD/DVD writer which I
can use to archive programs. If this works it will be much more
convenient than using a TivoNET.
Incidentally, my computer case is a custom case built
out of a black magnesium Next Cube case. I can post a picture
up if requested.
The program is very cool but its one of the more difficult
installs I've done of any free software package I've had. This
is mostly for two reasons I think:
1. Because MythTV relies on a lot of packages (e.g. XMLTV, lame,
ALSA) as well as others I had to install (I have an nForce 1
motherboard and had to install the network, sound, and video
drivers for it) it took a while to sort out the instructions.
Plus RedHat 9.0's stock kernel doesn't seem to recompile correctly,
so I had to install a stock 2.4.21 kernel, which doesn't seem
to work with my USB mouse. Ah well, I used PS/2 mouse instead.
The packages I used were:
alsa-driver-0.9.5.tar.bz2
alsa-lib-0.9.5.tar.bz2
alsa-tools-0.9.5.tar.bz2
alsa-utils-0.9.5.tar.bz2
lame-3.93.1-fr2.i386.rpm
lame-devel-3.93.1-0.n0i.i686.rpm
NVIDIA_nforce-1.0-0248.mdk90up_2.4.19_16.athlon.rpm (video driver)
NVIDIA_nforce-1.0-0248.tar.gz (network driver)
xmltv-0.5.14.tar.bz2
2. The motherboard based video was intel8x0 based but the built-in
OSS driver with RedHat didn't seem to work very well with
mythbackend. It would hang on opening /dev/dsp. This seemed
to be fixed by installing ALSA.
This is a copy of my modules.conf file if you're interested:
alias usb-controller usb-ohci
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
#alias sound-slot-1 btaudio
alias char-major-89 i2c-dev
options i2c-core i2c_debug=1
options i2c-algo-bit bit_test=1
alias char-major-81 bttv
alias char-major-81-0 bttv
# pre-install bttv
options bttv gbuffers=4
#pre-install btaudio modprobe
alias eth0 nvnet
alias usb-interface usb-ohci
alias char-major-195 nvidia
3. The BTTV driver seems to work very intermittently on my
motherboard. The problem is that sometimes when I change
the channel occassionally I get VIDIOCSYNC errors from
mythbackend and I would have to unload and reload the "bttv"
backend before it will work again. The kernel messages I
receive are:
bttv0: detected by eeprom: Hauppauge (bt848) [card=2]
bttv0: Hauppauge eeprom: model=56111, tuner=Philips FI1236 MK2 (2), radio=no
bttv0: using tuner=2
tuner: type set to 2 (Philips NTSC (FI1236,FM1236 and compatibles))
bttv0: i2c: checking for MSP34xx @ 0x80... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA9875 @ 0xb0... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA7432 @ 0x8a... not found
bttv0: registered device video0
bttv0: registered device vbi0
tuner: TV freq (268435455.93) out of range (44-958)
tuner: TV freq (268435455.93) out of range (44-958)
tuner: TV freq (268435455.93) out of range (44-958)
bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=1cbea810
bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=1cbea810
bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=1cbea810
bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=1cbea810
tuner: TV freq (268435455.93) out of range (44-958)
bttv0: unloading
To try to fix this, I used the "gbuffers=4" option in the bttv
module driver, and modified the "bttv-driver.c" file as
by an earlier suggestion:
count++;
if (count > 20) { /* change this number to 200 */
btwrite(0, BT848_INT_MASK);
printk(KERN_ERR
"bttv%d: IRQ lockup, cleared int mask\n", btv->nr);
bt848_offline(btv);
}
}
This seemed to put a band-aid on the problem, because it doesn't
seem to happen often, though it still happens occassionally. I
still don't understand why the bttv driver is crashing.
Anyways, MythTV is truly a great program. If I could figure out
the flaky video driver, I would have no problems. But this is likely
not a MythTV problem. Thanks!
Dan
----- End forwarded message -----
discourse, because I think MythTV is a seriously killer app
and that it could really make an application that would bring
Linux and free software to a lot of people if it could be
installed reliably. I am very excited about MythTV so that
is why I hope others can benefit from my experience.
My background is a long time Linux user (since Linux 0.98pl5). I have
been trying to build a cool looking entertainment appliance out of a
Linux box, and MythTV seems like the perfect centerpiece of it.
Incidentally, my computer is an ASUS nForce A7N266-VM MB w/ 512 MB of
RAM, Athlon 2100+ XP processor, 60 GB Western Digital Hard Drive, and
a old BT-848 based Hauppage WinTV card (though I also bought an
Avermedia Studio card that I did not have a lot of luck with). I am
trying to replace my TiVo with a computer with a CD/DVD writer which I
can use to archive programs. If this works it will be much more
convenient than using a TivoNET.
Incidentally, my computer case is a custom case built
out of a black magnesium Next Cube case. I can post a picture
up if requested.
The program is very cool but its one of the more difficult
installs I've done of any free software package I've had. This
is mostly for two reasons I think:
1. Because MythTV relies on a lot of packages (e.g. XMLTV, lame,
ALSA) as well as others I had to install (I have an nForce 1
motherboard and had to install the network, sound, and video
drivers for it) it took a while to sort out the instructions.
Plus RedHat 9.0's stock kernel doesn't seem to recompile correctly,
so I had to install a stock 2.4.21 kernel, which doesn't seem
to work with my USB mouse. Ah well, I used PS/2 mouse instead.
The packages I used were:
alsa-driver-0.9.5.tar.bz2
alsa-lib-0.9.5.tar.bz2
alsa-tools-0.9.5.tar.bz2
alsa-utils-0.9.5.tar.bz2
lame-3.93.1-fr2.i386.rpm
lame-devel-3.93.1-0.n0i.i686.rpm
NVIDIA_nforce-1.0-0248.mdk90up_2.4.19_16.athlon.rpm (video driver)
NVIDIA_nforce-1.0-0248.tar.gz (network driver)
xmltv-0.5.14.tar.bz2
2. The motherboard based video was intel8x0 based but the built-in
OSS driver with RedHat didn't seem to work very well with
mythbackend. It would hang on opening /dev/dsp. This seemed
to be fixed by installing ALSA.
This is a copy of my modules.conf file if you're interested:
alias usb-controller usb-ohci
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
#alias sound-slot-1 btaudio
alias char-major-89 i2c-dev
options i2c-core i2c_debug=1
options i2c-algo-bit bit_test=1
alias char-major-81 bttv
alias char-major-81-0 bttv
# pre-install bttv
options bttv gbuffers=4
#pre-install btaudio modprobe
alias eth0 nvnet
alias usb-interface usb-ohci
alias char-major-195 nvidia
3. The BTTV driver seems to work very intermittently on my
motherboard. The problem is that sometimes when I change
the channel occassionally I get VIDIOCSYNC errors from
mythbackend and I would have to unload and reload the "bttv"
backend before it will work again. The kernel messages I
receive are:
bttv0: detected by eeprom: Hauppauge (bt848) [card=2]
bttv0: Hauppauge eeprom: model=56111, tuner=Philips FI1236 MK2 (2), radio=no
bttv0: using tuner=2
tuner: type set to 2 (Philips NTSC (FI1236,FM1236 and compatibles))
bttv0: i2c: checking for MSP34xx @ 0x80... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA9875 @ 0xb0... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA7432 @ 0x8a... not found
bttv0: registered device video0
bttv0: registered device vbi0
tuner: TV freq (268435455.93) out of range (44-958)
tuner: TV freq (268435455.93) out of range (44-958)
tuner: TV freq (268435455.93) out of range (44-958)
bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=1cbea810
bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=1cbea810
bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=1cbea810
bttv0: irq: SCERR risc_count=1cbea810
tuner: TV freq (268435455.93) out of range (44-958)
bttv0: unloading
To try to fix this, I used the "gbuffers=4" option in the bttv
module driver, and modified the "bttv-driver.c" file as
by an earlier suggestion:
count++;
if (count > 20) { /* change this number to 200 */
btwrite(0, BT848_INT_MASK);
printk(KERN_ERR
"bttv%d: IRQ lockup, cleared int mask\n", btv->nr);
bt848_offline(btv);
}
}
This seemed to put a band-aid on the problem, because it doesn't
seem to happen often, though it still happens occassionally. I
still don't understand why the bttv driver is crashing.
Anyways, MythTV is truly a great program. If I could figure out
the flaky video driver, I would have no problems. But this is likely
not a MythTV problem. Thanks!
Dan
----- End forwarded message -----