[mpeg2] kfir and linux 2.4.XX

[Ralph Metzler <rjkm@convergence.de>]

Andrew Thomas writes:
 > I am trying to get a Kfir board working with the Linux driver.
 > 
 > I know that the card does work, I've successfully used it on a 
 > Windows 98 machine and encoded a NTSC stream.
 > 
 > I've tried several versions of the linux kernel with Redhat 7.2
 > filesystem/applications. The kernels I've used are built from 2.4.2
 > (Redhat SRPM), 2.4.12 (Redhat SRPM) and 2.4.9 (vanilla Linus
 > distribution).
 > 
 > I've also tried 4 different PC's: Pentium 166/Intel Triton;
 > 1Ghz P3 Serverworks chipset; 450Mhz P3 Intel chipset; 750 MHz P3 (different
 > intel chipset). [All of these machines are made by HP of course..]
 > 
 > And I'm using the cvs version of the driver. I've used i2c-core and
 > i2c-algo-bits from both the kernel distribution and those in the cvs
 > tree.
 > 
 > Moreover, I've also tried both PAL and NTSC signals.
 > 
 > The behaviour is typically: the modules load successfully, but
 > 
 > cat /dev/video0 > /tmp/foo.mpg
 > 
 > generates a zero length file.


Which parameters did you set exactly?

 
 > However, on the Pentium machine, the same command locks up the system
 > (requiring a reset) - I used this hardware and Win98 to test the kfir card,
 > and and the card does work with win98 on that platform.
 > 
 > I'd like to hear from anyone that has this card working. Could you
 > let me know what kernel version you're running, on what hardware,
 > and any changes you might have made to the driver? 


The last time I tried it was with a 2.4.10 kernel on an ASUS KG7 with
1.4GHz AMD Thunderbird and it worked without problems.

 
 > I've started tinkering with the source, but it's very difficult to
 > make progress as the driver is the only documentation I have. Are there
 > any documents available which describe the hardware? (at the level
 > of detail where it would be possible to maintain the driver)

We got one datasheet (under NDA) which did not go into much detail,
at least not nearly enough to write a driver.
To write the driver Visiontech gave us the Windoze NT sources and some
support over e-mail. 


Ralph