On Sun, 11 Jul 2004, Hans W. Uhlig wrote: > I purchased not long ago a new machine to function as > a mythtivo and finished assembling it this weekend, > sadly when I dropped in the three bt878a capture cards > the unit just decides to spit out a greenscreen/static > across the bus. If I rip out any 2 of the cards > leaving just one it works fine.
What about leaving two cards in? Does that do anything? Try to place the two cards in adjacent PCI slots, rather than two PCI slots that are apart -- that minimizes the IRQ conflicts. IRQ conflicts are generally not a problem for PCI devices, but it *could* be a problem if you're using two identical devices. The other issue is the IO ports. All devices have a limited IO ports that they can use, and if all the available IO port ranges are used up, then you'll end up with a conflict. It's entirely possible the device was designed to use only one range of IO ports (in which case you can't install multiples of that card in one computer.) To check for this, install two of the cards, then try probing the PCI devices using `lspci -vv`: # lspci -vv 0000:02:08.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt8... ... Region 0: Memory at f46fe000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K] ... The above is the listing for my BT878 capture card. Make sure none of the "Region N" listed are same as other devices. If some of them are same, then you got a conflict, or the card wasn't designed to be installed in multiples in a single computer. If installing two cards works, and if the IRQ and the IO ranges conflict, then try installing the third card. Then work out the IRQ and the IO at that time, for three card scenario. Take it one step at a time -- two cards first, then the third. [snip] > Also one other thing to note is while running on one > card only it spits out these messages periodically > > bttv0: timeout: drop=64 irq=97874/97876, > risc=1490e07c, bits: HSYNC OFLOW FDSR > bttv0: reset, reinitialize I've never seen that on my BT878... BTW, what program are you using to view the TV signals? What commands? Make sure you're using /dev/video0 for the first video device, /dev/video1 for the second, and /dev/video2 for the third. (I use `xawtv`, and I type `xawtv -c /dev/video1` for the second video.) Also, make sure you're not using the Xv extension on the second and third instances of the TV signal viewing program, because only one application is allowed to use Xv at any given time. Most likely you'll have to explicitely tell the program not to use Xv extension (I use `xawtv`, and I type `xawtv -noxv` to turn off the Xv extension. To combine with the above command, you'd type `xawtv -noxv -c /dev/video1` to view the second TV signal, `xawtv -noxv -c /dev/video2` for the third TV signal.) -Mark -- Mark K. Kim AIM: markus kimius Homepage: http://www.cbreak.org/ Xanga: http://www.xanga.com/vindaci Friendster: http://www.friendster.com/user.php?uid=13046 PGP key fingerprint: 7324 BACA 53AD E504 A76E 5167 6822 94F0 F298 5DCE PGP key available on the homepage _______________________________________________ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
