[vdr] Re: ARM crashed while cutting, VDR watchdog timer failed.

[Guido Fiala <gfiala@s.netic.de>]

On Tuesday,  1. January 2002 19:45, you wrote:
> Dirk Wiebel wrote:
> ...
>
> > 2.1 --> crashes reproducably
> > 1.3 --> no crashes
> >
> > Might that be your differences, too?
>
> No, I have two 1.3 cards.
>
> Other data: Duron 700 Mhz, 256MB RAM, Kernel 2.16.
>
> I will look into the problem a little further as soon
> as I have a long enough gap between timer entries. ;-)
>
> I still hope that I will find a workaround that allows
> stable cutting without regular ARM crashes.

Looked into my log:
>From Februar to September no crashes - was the failure message available at 
all?
>From September to Dezember a dozen or so, mostly due to the "frozen LNB" on 
channel not sync'ed, never during cutting.
Have a Tekram-BX mainboard, 450 MHz P2.

If it is'nt a design failure in the firmware or card hardware, as one might 
guess with all those data, the conclusion might be it's a failure in the 
mainboard design.

there are several possibilities:
-problem with the interrupt line
-problem with bus load (data & adress lines) if all slot's are engaged
-problem with the power load on PCI bus 5V, 12V, 3.3V

That it happens during cutting could be triggered by:
-there is more power drawn due to disk activity
-there are more PCI devices in action, more interrupts active
-more glitches on the bus or power lines

possible solutions:
-solder larger capacitors on the DVB boad to support the power lines
-measure the power with an oscilloscope to check
-solder additional power-lines (e.g. from an floppy connector) to the 
appropriate contacts at the DVB board (like it's done for certain firewire or 
graphics cards)
-reconfigure interrupt lines manually in BIOS