On Sun, 13 Aug 2006 13:17:19 +1200
Barry wrote:

> Hi all
> 
> I have been given a Kasan WinX Pioneer IV card which is now driving my
> monitor at 1024x768 15bpp. It also has video in, video out, antenna and
> svhs? out and possibly a tv tuner. The 1 advantage so far is it gives ma
> an extra 64 meg of ram.
> 
> I gather it is a very old card.
> 
> lspci -v reports
> 
> 00:09.0 VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems TGUI
> 9660/938x/968x (rev d3) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
>          Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 17
>          Memory at cfc00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
>          Memory at cfbf0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
>          Memory at cf400000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
>          Expansion ROM at cfbe0000 [disabled] [size=64K]
> 

man trident shows some tv out options. see also below.


> lshw reports
> 
>   *-display
>               description: VGA compatible controller
>               product: TGUI 9660/938x/968x
>               vendor: Trident Microsystems
>               physical id: 9
>               bus info: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:09.0
>               version: d3
>               size: 4MB
>               width: 32 bits
>               clock: 33MHz
>               capabilities: vga bus_master
>               resources: iomemory:cfc00000-cfffffff
> iomemory:cfbf0000-cfbfffff iomemory:cf400000-cf7fffff irq:17
> 
> Google has not helped me much. Should I be able to output to a tv with
> this card? No joy from the video out plug on my 1st test. Am I missing
> drivers for output or tv tuning etc. All advice welcome.
> 

OK so this card possibly has four functions -(1) output to a normal
monitor, (2) output to a TV, (3) capturing composite video and (4)
tuning tv stations to pass to the video cpature function. Thats a lot of
functionality, so lets go one at a time.

Monitor out - you have sussed. I assume that you are using the trident
driver (thats an xorg driver not a kernel driver by the way) rather than
ther vesa driver or something else. Please check. Please also read man
trident for details on the configuration of the card

TV-out - this is of course related to monitor out, but usually involves
an extra chip to provide the TV signal. man trident revelas that there
is a setting that depends on what chipset you use. Look carefully at the
card and see if you can see a cip with CH7005 or VT1621 and set the xorg
config appropriately. The chip will probably be physically near the
TV-out socket.

Secondly TVs come as PAL or NTSC - all NZ tv's will do PAL, some will
also do NTSC. Set that config to PAL.

Thirdly you usually need to have the computer plugged into the TV and
the TV switched on before you boot, because the chipset detects the
presence of the TV and doesn't turn on the TV functions without it.

Composite video in: most modern drivers provide a V4L or V4L2 interface
(V4L = video for linux). The classic chip that has a v4l[2] interface id
the conexant BT848/878 chipset, powered by the bttv driver. If an older
card works, it will usually use this chipset. Again take a good look at
the chips and if you see 848 or 878 you may be in luck. Most such
chipsets have a number of inputs which are switchable - composite in,
s-video in and tuner in.

Tuner: - again this is another chipset, often provided by Philips. Look
for chip numbers again. Things get murky here as there are a lot of
tuner chipsets. The tuner is often housed in an aluminium case for
reasons of shelding.

I2C : this is a low speed interchip protocol. Most TV cards use I2C to
communicate between the chips, and often various bits of the I2C kernel
drivers need to be anabled, although again this is often a bit hit and
miss between different cards.

As there is noto much info on the net about using these cards with
linux, I suggest that the TV Out is likely to be the best you will do.
If you can get the tuner etc going good luck to you, but I'd pay close
attention to Craig's suggestion...



> TIA
> 
> Barry
> 
> 

-- 
Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

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