bt878 - blue screen - please help!

[sixgunz]

Hi.

Have been running ZM for a while with USB cams - fantastic.

Now need a bit more connectivity, so got a card from EBay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... %3AIT&rd=1

Cant get the thing to work - just a blue screen!!

Have read all the other posts and tried all the normal things (Card repositiong, Modprobe changes, etc)

Nothing works!!

Read the ZM logs - all seems to be normal (well, capturing blue screens!)

Also, there are some strange connectors on the board:

1) A Phono connector above the BNC connectors labelled "con12"

2) A 4 pin connector (like a cd-rom connector) labelled "con10" with "RUN G PWR" above - the "RUN" pointing to pin1. the "G" pointing to pin3 and PWR on it's own

3) A blue component next to the external BNC connectors at the top labeled "VR1" (Guessing a variable resistor) but it's purpose is unknown..

Do I need to connect or configure these things? I'm not too technical with this kind of hardware!

I would look through the manual, apart from the fact I dodn't get one with the card. There is a manual on the CD for a VS/DS1000, which has a different configuration than my card, so I'm a bit dubious about that.

I have had ZM running with USB cameras with no problems, so I know what to do to get ZM up and running - just the bloody card!!! Guess that's what you get for about £40

Can someone help?

Thanks for looking - hope to hear from someone soon! I'm tearing my hair out!

Kind regards,

Your humble servant, Glenn.

[jameswilson]

i have one of these and im doing some more work on it tonight
modprobe
options bttv gbuffers=16 card=133,132,133,133

but i have failed to get more than 4 inputs out of it on a 2.6.12 kernel. I will try tonight on a 2.6.13 kernel

what distro you running, by the way the card you have is a kodicom 4400r

[sixgunz]

Hi James

Well, you seem to be doing better than me I cant get any captures at all!!

I also tried the modprobe thing - didn't work for me

I am using the Live CD distro of version 1.21 - patched it to 1.22, but then did a clean re-install to 1.21 again when installed the card.

Am now testing whether the card is actuall faulty - installing win98 and looking for an autodetect....

A Kodicom 4400r - wow, you must know your cards!!

Do you know what the other connectors are for?

[jameswilson]

the red phono is a video out and wont work under linux, the floppy drive like connector is where the little 4 bnc things plug onto. Dont touch the variable cap. And i assume the other connectors are to connect your reset switches and mobo so the card can reboot the pc if it crashes but again i dont know if that will work with linux.

The live cd distro wont support this card as the card is newer than the kernel. I think your on a 2.6.7 kernel. You need 2.6.12 min and 2.6.13 for better support.

[sixgunz]

Thanks again for your reply!

I have been reading of the imminent release of an updated live distro of zm - hopefully with the latest kernel!

In the meantime, do you (or anyone else) know how to upgrade a kernel without a full reinstall or a lengthy / complicated recompile? I'm a bit of a noob with Linux! I would just install a newer kernel on the live cd distro then!

I have heard of kernel RPM's - I can just about install RPM's, but recompiles are waaay out of my reach at the mo!


About the card connectors:

Wow, a video out? Didn't know that was a feature of these cards!

The BNC inputs are at the top of the card. The cdrom type connector is a seperate connector at the bottom, next to the two pin connector, so I'm still at a loss on what that is...?

So these things also have a reset function? How does that work? I would think it would connect to the rset on the mb (remove the rset switch from the front panel) but in what situaton would the card reset the computer? How does a video capture card know if a computer has crashed? That's a bit intelligent for a vid capture isn't it?

I have been reading on similar cards (although these ones are a lot more expensive) have various sensor inputs - pir, audio, etc. Could the cdrom connector be something for that?

I really wish I had some documentation for this card!!

Thanks for your help!

Glenn.

[jameswilson]

your starting to push my knowledge now lol. The reset thing, yes as far as i know thats what it does i suppose it knows if its crashed by the fact there is naff all going down the pci bus! but im guessing.
those alarm things you mention are called gpio, but i think there a windows only thing, just like the vid out is. There are also some leds on the card but again they dont work linux.

This is when i wish i could write drivers but like you i wouldnt dare recompile a kernel lol.

regarding updateing the kernel i tried using the inbuilt upgrade tool but wasnt succesful. I suppose you could try installing a precompiled kernel for mandake 10.1 (cooker i believe) but you would have to cross your fingers as i couldnt help there. Ross has made a new cd based on mandrake but like Coreys Ctu zm thats fc3 based. I used coreys distro but need a newer kernel than 2.6.12 so am trying other things at the moment.

[sixgunz]

I've just been looking at the ZM distro I've been using, and apparently it's using 2.6-12-12!!

I have previously installed Mandriva 2006 from a cover CD, with the same kernel and got the card to "partially" work!!

I tried to use the same config on the ZM distro and it didn't work!

Any reason why this would be?

[sixgunz]

James, I'm sure you have already seen this, but:

http://www.linuxtv.org/v4lwiki/index.php/Kodicom_4400R

Has excellent techical documentation on how to get the card to work.

I'll look through this myself, but I'm not near the server - it's at work so I'll have to wait to try anything.

[sixgunz]

Hi All.

Well, managed to get the card working, after a long time comming!!

Thanks to James' help, and the link I found to the card details.....

My mistake above - I said the cd install distro ha 2.6.12-12. James, you were right - it's 2.6.7.... No support for the Kodicom!!

Upgraded kernel to 2.6.12-12....

Here's how to do it the easy way............

1. Find a Linux distro on Magazine CD (I'm using Mandriva 2006)

2. Mount it in the drive

3. Update software repository to include the CD source

4. Find the kernel (named like kernel-2.6.12-12.rpm)

5. Click on it - the installer will probably say it needs dependencies, which is why it is best to get it from a CD - it's designed as a full OS install, so it will also come with all the dependencies, and will autoselect them!!!!

6. When finished, reboot and you will find a new entry on the lilo screen.

7. Select that and voilla - upgraded kernel booted with 2.6.12-12 support!!

Worked for me!!

One tip for anyone with slow framerates - Turn off any ports that are not used!! If you have all 16 ports running, you will only get about 0.25fps as the card multiplexes the streams (4x4)

[jameswilson]

Can you get more than the first 6 out of it and what path etc do you use mate, as im still struggling. I have tried a 2.6.13 kernel no joy just about to try a 2.6.14. Did you leave it to auto-detect or did you do the modprobe thingy. Cheers

James