Setting up a TV card that is there but not there.

[grub]

I am setting up a system to act as a PVR to replace an XP setup that died. The TV card I have is a Winfast DVR3100H. Searching for this card finds no useful information. However, a system search sees the card as /dev/dvb/adapter0 and as a Conexant Systems CX23418 chip card.
Vendor ID 0x14f1, Device ID 0x5b7a, sub vendor ID 0x107d, sub device ID 0x6690, module CX18.
Unfortunately for me none of the tv programs can use it.
Kaffeine seems to see it as device1=Zarlink ZL10353, but a scan for channels finds nothing.
TVtime sees nothing.
VLC can't see it either.
A search for cx23418 finds heaps of information. LinuxTV has firmware (.fw) for the chip. Other sites show text for a driver of various flavours. Unfortunately I can't find some simple instructions on how to create the driver using the text and firmware and putting it into the system so it all can come together and work.
Some say use sudo, you say don't! (so what do you use?) Others have wget.
So if someone can point to the Friendly manual to search and read on how to compile and instal drivers that may or may not work I would appreciate it.
Knowing something about a subject doesn't make someone competent with it. I know how one could do brain surgery, doesn't mean I can do brain surgery:)
Thanking you in advance.

Using the latest Full Monty install on intel core 2 with 4 gig of ram.

[grub]

You asked for it, fool Just kidding, there is lots of information.


For the firmware files.
http://linuxtv.org/downloads/firmware/

This was mentioned in a Fedora Forum. (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/index.php/t-259997.html
"You need the cx18 firmware.

 http://dl.ivtvdriver.org/ivtv/firmware/

 Unpack it, place the .fw files in /lib/firmware and reboot."

Lots of subdirectories in that directory.

The following link gives details on downloading a driver. I understand the words but the actual method of building, unpacking and I do not know the correct method. I did download the file .bz2 (it had a slightly different name) and something called Ark will open it, I think.
http://www.ivtvdriver.org/index.php/Cx18#Obtaining_the_driver

The following link has a thread name of "conexant cx23418 video card driver for ubuntu", but I think this is the version that we are warned about. The link mentioned in it was the one that took me to the just above driver.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1530529&page=2

The following link gives a file called cx23418.h
Not sure what it does but it looks very much like a configuration file.  A "h" file is a new one to me.
http://linux.sourcearchive.com/documentation/2.6.28-2.2/cx23418_8h-source.html

The following link is a forum page detailing how someone detected their card. It was different one to mine but the results looked impressive.
http://www.techsupportteam.org/forum/linux-alternative-os/5417-saa7134-pci-tv-tuner-cards-linux.html

The following link provided examples of a detected card using something called dmesg and lspci.
http://openbenchmarking.org/linux/PCI/0400/14f1:5b7a

The following link provides details on setting up a hauppauge card, not exactly mine but uses same chipset.
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HVR-1600

The following link gives details on building and installing a device driver. Good if you are competent with the lingo. Perhaps a translation wiki is needed, ie mkdir = md in dos and so on.
http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/How_to_Obtain,_Build_and_Install_V4L-DVB_Device_Drivers

The following link gives information on configuring said card and has links to files (I think) that are needed.
http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/VIDEO_CX18.html

As you can see, lots of links and information overload. Big trouble if my Winfast card isn't based on the conexant chip.

Again, thanking you in advance.

[Old-Polack]

A couple of locate commands, pertaining to firmware and the 3.2.18 kernel;

[root@fatman ~]# locate cx234 |grep firmware
/lib/firmware/v4l-cx23418-apu.fw
/lib/firmware/v4l-cx23418-cpu.fw
/lib/firmware/v4l-cx23418-dig.fw


[root@fatman ~]# locate cx234 |grep 3.2.18
/lib/modules/3.2.18-pclos1.bfs/kernel/drivers/media/video/cx2341x.ko.gz                              <-- Here
/usr/src/kernel-devel-3.2.18-pclos1.bfs/include/media/cx2341x.h

Being as there is firmware and a driver that are already present for the current default kernel, I'd be inclined to try those, before looking for drivers and firmware from outside the PCLinuxOS repo. Just because you've found links to information that involves much earlier kernels does not mean that that information in correct for the current PCLinuxOS default kernel.

[grub]

You are right, Old Polack, the files you listed are within my setup.
So how do I use them as I would assume that because they are already there then the system would have used them when it needed to.
Thanks in advance.

[grub]

Still trying to set up a PVR but nothing seems to work. MythTV won't setup, other programs that are noted as being usable are not seeing the card but a scan using lspci -v  in konsole finds

03:00.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23418 Single-Chip MPEG-2 Encoder with Integrated Analog Video/Broadcast Audio Decoder
        Subsystem: LeadTek Research Inc. Device 6690
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 16
        Memory at f8000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64M]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: cx18
        Kernel modules: cx18

Next attempt will be with wine and the windows drivers and program. See how that goes.

[Old-Polack]

Still trying to set up a PVR but nothing seems to work. MythTV won't setup, other programs that are noted as being usable are not seeing the card but a scan using lspci -v  in konsole finds

03:00.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23418 Single-Chip MPEG-2 Encoder with Integrated Analog Video/Broadcast Audio Decoder
        Subsystem: LeadTek Research Inc. Device 6690
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 16
        Memory at f8000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64M]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: cx18
        Kernel modules: cx18

Next attempt will be with wine and the windows drivers and program. See how that goes.

In a terminal, try this command;

[prompt ~]# lsmod |grep cx2341x

Post your results.

[grub]

The results of lsmod |grep cx2341x

cx2341x                15512  1 cx18
v4l2_common             4594  3 tuner,cx18,cx2341x
videodev               68676  4 tuner,cx18,cx2341x,v4l2_common

As one can see, the hardware is being detected but no software is seeing it.

[hughc]

I have a Hauppauge tv card in my system.  I had to manually set the interrupt.  Dmesg was where I got the idea.  Use  Configure your computer , Hardware, Mange your hardware, find the TVCard in the list on the left, and then use either Set current driver option or run  config tool to set the interrupt.

[grub]

Sorry for taking so long to get to replying to you, my business went belly up and I have been very distracted.
I eventually had to remove the card from the system as for some reason the system decided to use the tv card as the sound card and I had no sound anywhere on the system until I removed the card and restarted the system. When things settle down with the closing of the business I will reinstall it and again see if I can get it to work.

[TNTman]

Is this any help?

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,98874.msg838217.html#msg838217