[linux-dvb] Hauppauge DVB-S-CI and Irdeto CAM

[Andrew de Quincey]

On Saturday 26 August 2006 15:13, Dave Oxley wrote:
> I've recently purchased a new CAM
> (http://www.scmmicro.com/dvb/dvb_cam.html#Irdeto1.11) as my provider
> (Austar here in Australia) changed something and my old CAM stopped
> being able to decrypt programmes. The new CAM is also unable to decrypt
> and data so I set about putting log statements into the kernel to see
> where it was failing (see attached patch and resulting log). My card is
> a Hauppage DVB-S-CI:
> lspic -v:
> 08:0d.0 Multimedia controller: Philips Semiconductors SAA7146 (rev 01)
>         Subsystem: Technotrend Systemtechnik GmbH Technotrend-Budget /
> Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-CI DVB card
>         Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 193
>         Memory at ddbffe00 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512]
> uname -a:
> Linux blackadder 2.6.17-gentoo-r5 #10 SMP Sat Aug 26 18:48:38 EST 2006
> x86_64 Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.00GHz GNU/Linux
>
> The lines going wrong are 738-744 in dvb_ca_en50221.c:
>         /* check if interface is still free */
>         if ((status = ca->pub->read_cam_control(ca->pub, slot,
> CTRLIF_STATUS)) < 0)
>                 goto exit;
>         if (!(status & STATUSREG_FR)) {
>                 /* it wasn't free => try again later */
>                 status = -EAGAIN;
>                 goto exit;
>         }
>
> Upon further checks status is 0 and therefore it always returns -EAGAIN
> and exits the loop at the end of the timeout (which I tried increasing
> by 4 times). I also tried commenting out this if statement to see what
> happened, but it just complained about write errors earlier than it got
> before.
>
> I have tried new firmware for my DVB-S card rather than the firmware
> specified in the get_dvb_firmware script (coincidently someone else just
> posted the list about this) but I couldn't get it to upload it.
>
> Is my CAM just incompatible with my card or is this a bug? If I should
> buy a new card, can anyone recommend a good card that will work with
> this CAM?

Does it ever manage to read a non-zero value from read_cam_control() ? If not, 
it sounds like a hardware problem.. budget cards are sometimes just /too/ 
budget for some cams... Its pretty much pot luck whether a given brand/type 
of cam works with them. 

I'v found the technotrend budget boards are more reliable for CAMs.

I /think/ the "full featured" cards have a proper cam interface chip on them, 
so they're far more compatable (altho obviously they're more expensive).