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   ***: nst has quit IRC (Ping timeout: 264 seconds)
   mkrufky: what chips are on this board, chibill?
   <br> oh nevermind:  ViXS, i dont think that's supported at all
   <br> it's more cost effective to simply purchase a supported card as opposed to hoping / waiting / trying yourself / attempting to fund development of such a device
   <br> b-rad: this is his board: https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/ViXS_PureTV-U_48A3
   chibill: I had this card laying around and figured hm someone has to have drives for such an old card. Guess I was wrong. And actually that's not the same board but sort of.
   <br> I was hoping there was some sort of driver that I could work off of for trying to use it as an SDR. XD
   mkrufky: The issue with this board is that the PCI bridge silicon is not supported
   <br> the cool parts that are fun to write drivers for - those are already supported
   <br> the only thing remains for that board is the number one most difficult part to bring up, and nobody had such a drive to work on it because at this point, the diminishing returns for bring such a board up have become zero
   <br> there is no info about that chip publicly available
   <br> somebody would have to put blood sweat and tears into reverse engineering the PCI bridge chip to have any chance of doing so ... i know two developers that are really good at that kind of thing, but they're not motivated to support such old hardware
   <br> im sorry
   mchehab: is SAA7136E that different than saa7135?
   <br> if not, someone with the datasheet could add support to the existing drivers
   <br> I guess this is a variant of saa7160... a very different chip than the ones supported by saa713x driver
   chibill: So I should just give up with that card? (I have two SDRs (rtl SDR and LimeSDR Mini) so yep
   <br> Hm
   mchehab: <u>chibill</u>: it is unlikely that people would write a new driver for it... if this is indeed a saa7160, I guess you might find some driver floating around
   <br> probably not at good shape
   <br> (i remember I saw something in the past)
   <br> so, you'll have to spend some effort to make it work
   <br> if you know how to program and want a pet project, then you could try to make it work
   <br> but, if otherwise all you want is to watch TV, better to buy an already supported device
   chibill: Well considering I was just going to look at the drvier for how it talks to the actual tuner and front end.  (Wanted to try and make a junky SDR with it for fun.)
   <br> Problally won't really do  much more.
   mchehab: probably that's not the best board for SDR
   <br> if all you want is to receive, a device with rtl2832 works better
   chibill: I have one of those and an LimeSDR Mini.
   <br> Like I said want to try my hand at writing a driver and stuff for fun.
   mchehab: ah
   <br> the thing is that I'm not sure how flexible is NXP TV bridges for SDR
   <br> the PCI bridge should be able to send I/Q data through userspace
   chibill: Well considering quite a few cards are software demod. (Like supposedly the one I have was but from reading your wiki it seems that it has the demod chip on board.)
   mchehab: yes, this one is not a software demod
   <br> (well, it might be for the hardware manufacturer - we never know :-) )
   <br> you'll likely have more luck with a board with conexant chipsets
   <br> (bttv, cx88, ...)
   <br> on several of those devices, there is a RISC inside, responsible for doing DMA transfers
   <br> and the datasheet are publicly available
   chibill: I wish there was like a general SDR channel on Freenode xD
   mchehab: you could, in thesis, write some RISC software to get the A/D samples directly and send to the driver
   <br> there used to have something like that for cx88 back in the old days
   <br> I remember I tried to apply the hacks to make a SDR cx88 driver, but the hacks didn't work...
   <br> and I ended by being sidetracked to something else
   chibill: Many times I have thought about desinging my own SDR but it just seems pretty complicated.
   <br> Sort of getting off topic for this channel tho. :(
   mchehab: np
   chibill: But thanks.
   mchehab: anytime
   <br> I guess I saw some SDR open-hardware projects somewhere
   <br> hmm... LimeSDR seems to be open hardware
   chibill: I have too. Most seem to like $100+ for a few single parts. Yea.
   mchehab: you could take a look on one such projects and try to do your own pet project
   chibill: I have some (Well it shipped yesterday but yea)
   <br> one*
   <br> LimeSDR Mini.