Hello experts, I have an AverTV 98 (bt878) PCI TV capture card installed in my computer, and would like to use it under linux. I'm running Gentoo linux 1.4_rc1, so the included kernel (2.4.19) can be built with bttv drivers, and I did so. Those drivers (version 0.7.x, I assume) loaded just fine, but when I try to use the card (via xawtv, for example) the card captures poorly for about 5-15 seconds, and then my computer freezes completely. I have to do a hard reset in order to restart my computer. I read the very similar thread on this list of about a week ago, but found no solutions, unfortunately! So I then installed the NEW v4l2 based bttv 0.9.x drivers. I patched my kernel to 2.4.20-rc1, and built the 0.9.x drivers. They also loaded just fine, and if I do an $ xawtv -hwscan -debug2 the reported driver version is 0.9.1 via v4l2 However, I still have the same symptoms! 5-15 seconds of poor capture (only the top 1/8 of the picture comes in) and then the computer freezes. Has anyone ever successfully gotten this card to work? If so, can you post your hw/sw configuration, and which bttv drivers you used? I'm willing to try anything at this point! Some thoughts I had about possible incompatibilities: 1) PCI conflict. I'll try changing the PCI slot and removing other cards to ease the bus (seems like a long long shot though...) 2) GCC3.2 conflict. Perhaps GCC3.2 just mangles the drivers! I'll try building/running on a GCC 2.95.x system. Any ideas? How can I find out more about what's going on? What is the best way to debug xawtv and its hardware interactions? I'd really love to use this thing! --saul
