ZoneMinder Forums

matador,

Can you verify if this is the same card:

http://www.provideo.com.tw/PV-149P.htm

I don't see the 'PC' model anywhere on the site.



Anyone else order one of these yet?

Thanks

Yep,

Thats the card I am currently using. I have connected various type of cameras with no issues.
"PC" must of been a typo... but it is the 149P.

-M

I've been looking at this forum for a while to decide on the best card and cameras to buy. I went for one of these ProVideo 149s after promising reviews, here's my tale of woe.

New AMD 64 bit 3.76Ghz, Centos 4.2 64bit, 500GB Satas raid 1 in Linux, plugged the card in to pci slot and machine won't boot. Tried every PCI slot, tried messing with Bios, concluded this card is incompatible with my gear.

Put card in my trusty old AMD 1.5Ghz, installed Centos 4.2 i386, installed bttv 0.9.15, ran xawtv -hwscan and as already mentioned in this forum, it shows itself as a ProVideo PV150. When I run xawtv, I get a picture on the screen then the machine crashes, there are no messages anywhere, it is a total system crash. I've tried all sorts of things, including moving the card around the pci slots, I've tried many different options on modprobe bttv, xawtv, I've even compiled the kernel (2.6.9) from scratch and I get the same result every time.

Can anyone offer some assistance, I'm becoming quite fed up with the whole thing not to mention the loss of money I'm suffering.

Let me start of by saying that I could be wrong.
I had setup a CentOS 4.2 and had to do a couple things to compile the bttv drivers to the kernel. As you already found out, the supplied kernel does not have the modules for bttv built. It also has another option to allow modules to be loaded that is disabled by default in CentOS (something like that anyway) I had to get the source, enable plugable modules, build then build the bttv drivers. Also the drivers are there in the source (I suggest useing those, as I was just toying around and trying to learn a bit more.). The other option is on CentOSs YUM repo there is a kernel-unsupported that has bttv enabled along with a few other things.

If your new to linux I don't suggest starting out with CentOS as the proper way to go about this is to use the stock kernel and rebuild it to add only what you must have. If you want to work for it then by all means

Regards,
Corey

Hi, Thanks for the quick response,

I am ok with Linux, the modules load fine from original distro and I also compiled whole kernel from scratch with same result. I noticed on the forum that Matador had a similar setup to me. The problem with my high spec machine is not Linux, it doesn't get that far.

Could my cameras be overloading something in the kernel ?, the crash happens after a picture is displayed from xawtv then it crashes immediately.

I'll have to ponder abit. As for your problem with you AMD 64 the only thing that comes to mind is the bus version/voltage.
I'm assuming that the crashing machine is giving you a kernel dump?

My AMD 64 bit is an Asus A8V Deluxe Motherboard, I have 1GB Memory.

My AMD 32 bit is An Mk35 with 512 MB of Memory.

I'm using Swann Cameras, both have BNC connectors and work fine through an AV port on the TV.

I have a usb logitech cam which works fine on both machines and ZM.

I don't have a crash dump, no messages on the console, just reboots as if power cycled,

Hi Viddud,

wierd problems your having.
I have not come across such problems with card I am using, and I have used it in a few different machines now.
Only a few things come to mind where the problem could be;

1. Are you running both PC's with onboard video card or separate PCI/AGP card? And as Cordel pointed out, it could be power supply levels not being sufficient? How many watts is your power supply? If you are using onboard video, try disabling this if you have a separate addon video card.

2. I have had issues like this in other scenarios caused by dodgy memory modules or memory slots, but you have tried 2 different machines(or did you move the memory across with it?). Have you tried moving the memory around, have you run a memory test?

3. IRQ conflicts? By the sounds of things you have already been playing around in the BIOS, did you disable some devices for troubleshooting? eg, network card, onboard sound?,

4. how much shared memory have you configured to make available?


For the other machine where you have got it to boot, you could enable kernel debugging, to find out why its rebooting, crashing..

The last test would be to take the card you have to friends computer, and see how it goes..

-M

Hi,

Just an update, I spent all weekend on this

I've tried everything possible on my asus motherboard (summary)

Removed all pci and agp cards.
Removed hard disks
Removed Memory and swapped with working system
Messed with every configuration in the bios.
Scanned forums at asus.

all failed with the same result, machine never gets to boot the OS off hard disk or cd with the card attached.

Posted tech support at Asus with my problem (not expecting to hear back from them,)

Tried the card in an MSI 2.8Ghz AMD with Linux and works perfectly. Unfortunately this machine won't take my Sata disks so I can't do a swap.

I'm now pursuing different cards, thanks to everyone who helped.

..