Avermedia TV card in Kubuntu Intrepid 8.10 amd64

Tue Mar 31 16:52:15 UTC 2009

James Buttery wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> This is my first post. I've recently decided to try out Kubuntu, I'm 
> having problems installing a tv card. I've googled but cannot find a 
> resolve for it.
>
> Heres what I've found and tried so far
>
> The laptop is a Sony VGN-AR41M. The tv card is an Avermedia M115S.
>
> found this when typing dmesg | less
>
> [ 28.026599] saa7133[0]: registered device video0 [v4l2]
>
> [ 28.026633] saa7133[0]: registered device vbi0
>
> [ 28.064671] r5u870-0: Microcode file "r5u870_1839.fw" is missing
>
> [ 28.064676] r5u870-0: Please see http://wiki.mediati.org/r5u870/Microcode
>
> [ 28.064679] r5u870-0: initialization failed: -2
>
> [ 28.064689] r5u870: probe of 3-2:1.0 failed with error -2
>
> [ 28.064721] usbcore: registered new interface driver r5u870
>
> [ 28.087950] saa7134 ALSA driver for DMA sound loaded
>
> [ 28.087983] saa7133[0]/alsa: saa7133[0] at 0xfc006800 irq 22 
> registered as card -2
>
> [ 29.057025] lp: driver loaded but no devices found
>
> I believe the saa7133 entries relate to the tv card
>
> i think the r5u870-0 errors are the webcam, which i'm going to work on 
> next
>
> when i type sudo lshw -C multimedia i get
>
> *-multimedia
>
> description: Audio device
>
> product: 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller
>
> vendor: Intel Corporation
>
> physical id: 1b
>
> bus info: pci at 0000:00:1b.0
>
> version: 03
>
> width: 64 bits
>
> clock: 33MHz
>
> capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
>
> configuration: driver=HDA Intel latency=0 module=snd_hda_intel
>
> *-multimedia
>
> description: Multimedia controller
>
> product: SAA7131/SAA7133/SAA7135 Video Broadcast Decoder
>
> vendor: Philips Semiconductors
>
> physical id: 4
>
> bus info: pci at 0000:08:04.0
>
> version: d1
>
> width: 32 bits
>
> clock: 33MHz
>
> capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
>
> configuration: driver=saa7134 latency=64 module=saa7134
>
> If i type lspci i get among other things
>
> 08:04.0 Multimedia controller: Philips Semiconductors 
> SAA7131/SAA7133/SAA7135 Video Broadcast Decoder (rev d1)
>
> i've loaded the following modules:
>
> * saa7134_empress
>
> * saa7134_alsa
>
> * saa7134_dvb
>
> * saa7134
>
> * tda1004x
>
> * dvb_pll
>
> * saa6752hs
>
> * videodev
>
> * v4l2_common
>
> * tuner
>
> i couldn't get this module to load
>
> * video_buf_dvb
>
> I created a file called saa7134 which contains
>
> alias char-major-81 videodev
>
> alias char-major-81-0 saa7134
>
> options saa7134 card=17
>
> and copied it to /etc/modprobe.d/
>
> I've installed mplayer, and kaffeine. also tried klear, kplayer and 
> tvtime.
>
> created a UK-Tacolneston file with the following data in it:
>
> # UK Tacolneston
>
> # T freq bw fec_hi fec_lo mod transmission-mode guard-interval hierarchy
>
> T 730166670 8MHz 3/4 NONE QAM16 2k 1/32 NONE
>
> I tried scan UK-Tacolneston > channels.conf
>
> which errored with:
>
> scanning UK-Tacolneston
>
> using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
>
> main:2247: FATAL: failed to open '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0': 2 No 
> such file or directory
>
> I'm now at a complete loss as to why I cant get the card working. I 
> think the driver is installed, just not working correctly... any help 
> would be appreciated.
>
> James
>

It looks like you're running into a firmware issue for that video card.  
We used to run into that very issue with Broadcom wireless cards in 
laptops a few years back.  A little history lesson is in order here.

Controller cards themselves need their own "brains".  That means their 
own little CPU's, DRAM's, and embedded operating systems.  That little 
embedded operating system is what tells, say, a wireless card how to be 
a wireless card, or a TV tuner how to be a TV tuner.  Back in the day, 
manufacturers put these little embedded operating systems on PROM chips 
of some sort, up to and including EEPROM's.  If you pulled that EEPROM 
out, your device would have no little operating system anymore and of 
course wouldn't work.  :-)  Well, bean-counters consider EEPROM's 
expensive.  So, manufacturers replaced the EEPROM chips with DRAM chips.

But wait, you say!  Won't a power-off flush out the contents of that 
DRAM?  You might as well have just yanked out the EEPROM chip from 
before!  What doggone good is that??

Manufacturers, of course, saw this limitation.  So, what they did was 
take that firmware image that would normally go into the EEPROM, and 
they just started including that image with the (usually Windows or Mac) 
device driver.  That firmware image now gets installed right along with 
the device driver on the hard disk (it's some file somewhere usually 
with an extension ".fw").  The driver would itself get loaded, then it 
would go grab this "blah-blah.fw" firmware image and load said firmware 
image into the actual device's "DRAM-replacement-for-EEPROM".  
Essentially, you've just replicated the functionality of the more 
expensive EEPROM by using cheaper DRAM and a software hack.

Here's where the problem starts.  Unfortunately, many manufacturers 
(Broadcom is one, Texas Instruments is another) don't allow their 
"blah-blah.fw" firmware images for their devices to be freely 
distributed.  There's no good reason for this (I strongly suspect 
Microsoft "persuasion" at work here).  That means that Linux or BSD 
developers can certainly write a driver...but without that firmware 
image, the device is useless.

What people tended to do with Broadcom wireless devices was extract the 
".fw" images out of the Windows device driver (remember, Win32 drivers 
usually came with your laptop or are downloadable).  They would then pop 
all the firmware images into the /lib/firmware directory on their 
GNU/Linux systems.  The GPL'd Linux driver would see that firmware, load 
it into the wireless NIC just like the Windows one does, and boom, your 
wireless card works.

You may have to do something similar for your TV tuner.  It looks like 
it's one of those kind of devices.

--TP
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