Mandrake 9 and FlyVIDEO 3000 - saa7134 chipset tvcard (long)

[Guest Phat Penguin]

Ok, here is how I eventually got my Lifeview FlyVIDEO 3000 tv-capture card up and running on my Mandrake 9.0 system (properly).

 

While Mandrake Mandrake 9 has native support for saa7134 based cards and found the tvcard on install when I went to the Control Center it told me there was not support for it ??. Frustrated, and not prepared to reinstall the system, it wasn't going to beat me, so if you are having trouble with a saa7134 based card, read on - this might help.

 

I have both Xawtv and Zapping working on my machine but it took a little research on the Net and a bit of hit and miss, trial and error tweaking but persistence and brute force won out in the end ...... so I thought I would share my experience.

 

XAWTV

 

Firstly my /home/$user/.xawtv file looks like this (Australian TV)

 

############################## cut & paste below ###################################

 

[global]

ratio = 4:3

freqtab = australia

pixsize = 128 x 96

pixcols = 1

jpeg-quality = 75

keypad-ntsc = no

keypad-partial = yes

osd = yes

 

# [station name]

# capture = overlay | grabdisplay | on | off

# input = Television | Composite1 | S-Video | ...

# norm = PAL | NTSC | SECAM | ...

# channel = #

# fine = # (-128..+127)

# key = keysym | modifier+keysym

# color = #

# bright = #

# hue = #

# contrast = #

 

[defaults]

norm = PAL

input = Television | Composite1 | S-Video |

capture = over

color = 27%

bright = 65%

hue = 44%

contrast = 45%

 

[ABC2]

channel = 2

capture = on

color = 50%

bright = 65%

hue = 50%

contrast = 45%

 

[TVW7]

channel = 7

capture = on

color = 50%

bright = 65%

hue = 50%

contrast = 45%

 

[sTW9]

channel = 9

capture = on

color = 50%

bright = 65%

hue = 50%

contrast = 45%

 

[NEW10]

channel = 10

capture = on

color = 50%

bright = 65%

hue = 50%

contrast = 45%

 

[sBS28]

channel = 28

capture = on

color = 50%

bright = 65%

hue = 50%

contrast = 45%

 

[ACCESS31]

channel = 31

capture = on

color = 50%

bright = 65%

hue = 50%

contrast = 45%

 

############################## end of file ###################################

 

Now to get that tvcard up and running.

 

Firstly I manually loaded the i2c-core and i2c-algo-bit modules

 

modprobe i2c-core i2c_debug=1

 

modprobe i2c-algo-bit bit_test=1

 

Now you need to load the video module,

modprobe videodev

 

Open a new terminal window and monitor your /var/log/messages file should show everything loaded up and well,

 

tail -f /var/log/messages

 

The following is a modified cut and paste post made to the Redhat TV for Linux list and where I found the (semi)solution to my problem, I had to make a few minor changes and I would suggest removing my comments from the final script when done.

 

I added the following to my /etc/modules.conf

 

pre-install saa7134 modprobe -k tuner tvaudio

post-remove saa7134 modprobe -r tuner tvaudio

options saa7134 card=2 mixer_nr=2

 

You might need to play around with the options a bit. I needed to set the card (2 = Flyvideo 3000) and mixer options to get it going.

 

Now a modprobe -k saa7134

 

modprobe -k saa7134 (all going well this should make the Xawtv desktop icon "automagically" appear on you desktop)

 

A lsmod should show the following as well as your other loaded modules.

 

lsmod

 

saa7134 56492 0 (autoclean)

tda9887 2656 0 (autoclean) (unused)

tuner 10468 1 (autoclean)

video-buf 12172 0 (autoclean) [saa7134]

i2c-core 18752 0 (autoclean) [saa7134 tuner tvaudio]

videodev 7712 3 (autoclean) [saa7134]

v4l1-compat 11588 0 (autoclean) [saa7134]

v4l2-common 7936 0 (autoclean) [saa7134 v4l1-compat]

 

If you look in /var/log/messages you should see somethimg similar to this.

 

Linux video capture interface: v1.00

i2c-core.o: i2c core module

i2c-core.o: driver i2c TV tuner driver registered.

saa7130/34: v4l2 driver version 0.1.9 loaded

PCI: Assigned IRQ 10 for device 00:08.0

saa7134[0]: found at 00:08.0, rev: 1, irq: 10, latency: 32, mmio: 0xd5400000

saa7134[0]: subsystem: 1131:0000, board: LifeView FlyVIDEO3000 [card=2,insmod option]

tuner: probing saa7134[0] i2c adapter [id=0x90000]

saa7134[0]/irq: looping -- clearing enable bits

tuner: chip found @ 0xc2

i2c-core.o: client [Philips PAL_BG (FI1216 and compa] registered to adapter [saa7134[0]](pos. 0).

i2c-core.o: adapter saa7134[0] registered as adapter 0.

Huh, no eeprom present (err=-5)?

sa7134:

saa7134[0]: registered device video0 [v4l2]

saa7134[0]: registered device vbi0

saa7134[0]: registered device radio0

saa7134[0]: registered device dsp1

saa7134[0]: registered device mixer2

 

The following script was placed into /etc/init.d/, I just called it tvcard and made it executable.

 

############################## cut & paste below ###################################

 

#!/bin/sh

# Startup script for saa7134 tv card (Flyvideo 3000)

#

# description:

 

# Source function library.

. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

 

 

prog="Flyvideo 3000 Driver"

 

start() {

echo -n $"Starting $prog ....... "

/sbin/modprobe -k saa7134 card=2 mixer_nr=2

echo

}

 

stop() {

echo -n $"Stopping $prog ....... "

/sbin/modprobe -r saa7134

echo

}

 

case "$1" in

start)

start

;;

 

stop)

stop

;;

 

*)

echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop}"

exit 1

 

esac

 

exit 0

 

############################## end of script ###################################

 

When this script was fired up the Xawtv shortcut "automagically" appeared on my desktop. One click and I was watching TV with Xawtv. Stopping the script after the tv is "turned off" will make the desktop icon disappear. Starting it makes it return.

 

ZAPPING

 

Zapping wouldn't work on my system so to get zapping working, it was just simple matter of setting the zapping_setup_fb file found in the /usr/bin directory suid, so

 

chmod 4755 /usr/bin/zapping_setup_fb ....... did the trick, click on zapping from the Multimedia menu or create a desktop shortcut and load your channels from the setup option in the GUI and you will be watching television on your Mandrake machine with the Flyvideo 3000 tv capture card.

 

I did have problems with losing the picture, sound and all sorts of problems orgiinally but following the above instructions sorted it out on my machine.

 

The script about was my saving grace and now slightly modified for my system it is now loaded on system boot - so now all the head-aches are gone.

 

I found the SysV-Init Editor in Mandrake made starting this script at boot (both level 3 & 5) very simple to achieve. Below is the modified script.

 

############################## cut & paste below ###################################

 

#!/bin/sh

# Startup script for saa7134 tv card (Flyvideo 3000)

#

# description:

 

# Source function library.

. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

 

 

prog="Flyvideo 3000 Driver"

 

start() {

echo -n $"Starting $prog ....... "

/sbin/modprobe -k i2c-core #### Included to sort sound problems on startup

/sbin/modprobe -k i2c-algo-bit #### Included to sort sound problems on startup

/sbin/modprobe -k tvaudio

/sbin/modprobe -k saa7134 card=2 mixer_nr=2

echo

}

 

stop() {

echo -n $"Stopping $prog ....... "

/sbin/modprobe -r saa7134

/sbin/modprobe -r tvaudio

/sbin/modprobe -r i2c-algo-bit #### Unloads the module on stop

/sbin/modprobe -r i2c-core #### Unloads the module on stop

echo

}

 

case "$1" in

start)

start

;;

 

stop)

stop

;;

 

*)

echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop}"

exit 1

 

esac

 

exit 0

 

############################## end of script ###################################

 

While this may not be the definitive answer to your specific problem I hope this helps pointing you in the right direction.

 

I have noticed I have lost system sounds with the i2c modules loaded .... but when watching tv what does it matter. Someone might have an answer to this one and I would welcome suggestions.

 

I also found zapping gave me a better quality picture than xawtv, but that might just be my system.

 

SYSTEM:

Mandrake 9.0 / KDE 3.0

Intel 266 PII

192mb RAM

32mb Riva TNT2 graphic card / Nvidia drivers