I found a new
encoder card that may be of interest to this group.
Its the Snazzi III
DVD Creator. It uses the Kfir2 (now Broadcom
BCM7040) chip.
The board appears to be a close clone to the
original reference
design that was produced by VisionTech before
they were bought up
by Broadcom.
I purchased one of
these and have been inspecting the board and
M$ Windoze drivers
that came with it. There is alot of valuable
information to be
had by reading the drivers inf file. Interestingly, the
microcode
for the
Kfir-II chip is all split out into separate files. There
appears
to be
separate microcode for:
Mpeg Audio
Mpeg 1 video
VCD
SVCD
DVD
AC3 Audio
Also, default values
for all the registers seem to be loaded into the
windoze registry, so
their values are listed in the inf file.
Before VisionTech
was bought up by Broadcom, they offered a Linux
driver with their
reference design. Is there anyone out there that is
NOT under NDA that
has this driver. It would seem all the information
needed to get said
driver working with this new board is easily extractable
from the windows
driver that is distributed with the card.
From what I've read
about past attempts to get tech info from Broadcom,
we don't stand much
of a chance there. But if anyone has any success
with getting info,
that would be the preferred way to proceed of coarse.
John
Stebbins
