[mythtv-users] AIR2PC HD5000 DVB i2c failure

[Paul B. Henson]

I have three AIR2PC HD5000 DVB cards installed in my myth server, which
have been working great for almost a year. I was originally running a
patched 2.6.14 kernel with SVN, but for a while now have been running a
stock 2.6.15 kernel with 0.19.

Wednesday night, I went to watch a recording I had made on Tuesday. The
hourlong program had only 40 minutes recorded, which was annoying but I
didn't think much of it. While mythtv has been at least 95% stable,
occasionally something weird would happen and I thought this cut off
recording was just another isolated instance.

Thursday night, I tried to watch a recording that had just been made, and
mythfrontend told me that no file could be found. This was more disturbing,
particularly as I realized that this error occurred for all recordings made
on Wednesday and Thursday. I discovered that both recordings scheduled from
10pm-11pm Tuesday night had stopped recording 40 minutes into the programs,
and that while mythtv thought things had been recorded on Wednesday and
Thursday, no files existed for those recordings.

I reviewed mythtv logs, and found nothing out of the ordinary. On looking
in the system messages file, I found hundreds of thousands of lines like
the following:


May  9 22:40:56 server b2c2-flexcop: i2c master_xfer failed
May  9 22:40:56 server lgdt330x: i2c_read_demod_bytes: addr 0x59 select 0x58 error (ret == -121)
May  9 22:40:56 server b2c2-flexcop: i2c master_xfer failed
May  9 22:40:56 server lgdt3303: lgdt3303_pll_set error (addr 28 <- 90, err = -121)
May  9 22:40:56 server b2c2-flexcop: i2c master_xfer failed
May  9 22:40:56 server lgdt330x: i2c_write_demod_bytes error (addr 02 <- 00, err = -121)


I thought possibly the cards had gotten into a bad state, so rebooted the
system. After rebooting, the cards are found, but are not initialized
correctly. udev creates the various dvb devices, but any attempt to access
them results in a device not found error. I then turned off the system and
left it off a couple minutes, but powering on still resulted in the same
failures. I even tried upgrading to the latest 2.6.16 kernel with no
change.


The following is logged when the system boots:

May 11 23:43:28 server b2c2-flexcop: B2C2 FlexcopII/II(b)/III digital TV receiver chip loaded successfully
May 11 23:43:28 server flexcop-pci: will use the HW PID filter.
May 11 23:43:28 server flexcop-pci: card revision 2
May 11 23:43:28 server ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APC1] enabled at IRQ 16
May 11 23:43:28 server GSI 20 sharing vector 0x3A and IRQ 20
May 11 23:43:28 server ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:05:06.0[A] -> Link [APC1] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 58
May 11 23:43:28 server DVB: registering new adapter (FlexCop Digital TV device).
May 11 23:43:28 server b2c2-flexcop: MAC address = ff:fe:ff:ff:ff:fe
May 11 23:43:28 server b2c2-flexcop: i2c master_xfer failed
May 11 23:43:28 server b2c2-flexcop: i2c master_xfer failed
May 11 23:43:28 server b2c2-flexcop: i2c master_xfer failed
May 11 23:43:28 server mt352_read_register: readreg error (reg=127, ret==-121)
May 11 23:43:28 server b2c2-flexcop: i2c master_xfer failed
May 11 23:43:28 server i2c_readbytes: i2c read error (addr 0a, err == -121)
May 11 23:43:28 server b2c2-flexcop: i2c master_xfer failed
May 11 23:43:28 server lgdt330x: i2c_read_demod_bytes: addr 0x59 select 0x02 error (ret == -121)
May 11 23:43:28 server b2c2-flexcop: i2c master_xfer failed
May 11 23:43:28 server b2c2-flexcop: i2c master_xfer failed
May 11 23:43:28 server stv0297_readreg: readreg error (reg == 0x80, ret == -22)
May 11 23:43:28 server b2c2-flexcop: i2c master_xfer failed
May 11 23:43:28 server mt312_read: ret == -121
May 11 23:43:28 server b2c2-flexcop: no frontend driver found for this B2C2/FlexCop adapter
May 11 23:43:28 server ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:05:06.0 disabled


The HD5000 has an lgdt330x front end, and previously this was detected
correctly. However, now there seems to be some i2c error.


lspci still shows the cards. I don't recall what it used to look like, so
can't tell if there's any difference.


----
05:06.0 Network controller: Techsan Electronics Co Ltd B2C2 FlexCopII DVB chip / Technisat SkyStar2 DVB card (rev 02)
        Subsystem: Techsan Electronics Co Ltd B2C2 FlexCopII DVB chip / Technisat SkyStar2 DVB card
        Flags: slow devsel, IRQ 58
        Memory at da000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Memory at da034000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32]

05:07.0 Network controller: Techsan Electronics Co Ltd B2C2 FlexCopII DVB chip / Technisat SkyStar2 DVB card (rev 02)
        Subsystem: Techsan Electronics Co Ltd B2C2 FlexCopII DVB chip / Technisat SkyStar2 DVB card
        Flags: slow devsel, IRQ 66
        Memory at da010000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Memory at da037000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32]

05:08.0 Network controller: Techsan Electronics Co Ltd B2C2 FlexCopII DVB chip / Technisat SkyStar2 DVB card (rev 02)
        Subsystem: Techsan Electronics Co Ltd B2C2 FlexCopII DVB chip / Technisat SkyStar2 DVB card
        Flags: slow devsel, IRQ 74
        Memory at da020000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Memory at da035000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32]
----


I have three identical cards, all of them fail the same way. I'm not sure
what happened at 10:40pm Tuesday, but something caused all of the cards to
fail simultaneously. I'm not sure if the cards are bad now, or the
motherboard developed a problem, or what. Over the weekend, I'm going to
remove all of the cards and try them one at a time. If they still fail
individually, I'm going to set up another system and see if I can get them
to work on another motherboard.

Anybody have any idea what's going on? I'm very sad at the moment :(...

Thanks much...



-- 
Paul B. Henson  |  (909) 979-6361  |  http://www.csupomona.edu/~henson/
Operating Systems and Network Analyst  |  henson at csupomona.edu
California State Polytechnic University  |  Pomona CA 91768