[linux-dvb] Twinhan card crashes with CAM

[Manu Abraham]

Sigmund Augdal Helberg wrote:

>Seeing lots of changes to CAM support for twinhan cards I desided to
>return to my patch for high-level CA in vlc. While things have improved
>considerably I still have some problems and questions:
> 
>1: Some times the card "crashes". Any ioctl involving cam return only
>garbage, and this does not seem to go away easily (a cold boot seems to
>work). So I'm wondering of there are any sequences off calls to the
>dst_ca ioctls that are known to crash whatever it is that crashes, so I
>can do what is possible from client side to avoid such sequences. If
>this is the case, shouldn't the driver block such sequences? Are there
>any known ways to get the card back on track that does not involve
>physical access to the machine in question?
>
>  
>

If you send in a wrong CA messages, the module does not reply after a 
while/depending upon how wrong the message is .. The only thing that can 
be done, is to send in a valid CA message. If the card crashes, the only 
way to get back is a power cycle. Earlier i thought this was a "feature" 
of the card, but now after some amount of work i feel that the crash is 
somewhat related to the STV0299, as i had the same issue in a case where 
the STV0299 had to be power cycled to get back.

None of the IOCTL's are known to crash the card, but a wrong message can 
surely do that.
 

>2: I use the capmt "add" call in order to decode aditional programs.
>While this seems to work there is currently no way to know how many
>programs the CAM can decode at once. (The relevant ioctl only returns 1
>regardless).
>
>  
>

This is dependant upon the CA module, different CA modules have 
different specs ..

>3: I have VP1030A ver 4.0 and VP1030C ver 1.0 cards. Is it true that
>these cards does not support NDS? All calls seem to be successful, but
>no decryption takes place. I read somewhere that you need 1032 for NDS,
>is this correct?
>  
>

You mean NDS the DVB solution vendor ? I don't know which CA module you 
are using for that though..
It returns app_info ?

At present as it is i can't see too much of a difference with the 1030 
and 1032 except that the 1032 is more compliant. The 1032 has a Fujitsu 
tuner rather than the STV0299 based one, and is slightly more sensitive 
to signals.


Manu