Arch Linux

ormu

Member

Registered: 2013-05-14

Posts: 22

[SOLVED] DVB-C card stopped working (after update?)

edit: Marked as solved because the problem hasn't occurred for years.

I have a TechnoTrend TT-Budget C-1501 PCI DVB-C card which used to work fine. Today I installed a bunch of updates including new kernel and now the card doesn't work. Current kernel version is 3.9.2-1-ARCH, as reported by uname -r. I don't remember the kernel version which was installed when the card worked but I installed Arch about a month ago and this was the first upgrade.

dmesg gives the following information:

$ dmesg | grep -i dvb
[    1.663037] saa7146: register extension 'budget_ci dvb'
[    1.663232] DVB: registering new adapter (TT-Budget C-1501 PCI)
[    1.718876] input: Budget-CI dvb ir receiver saa7146 (0) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.4/0000:03:00.0/0000:04:01.0/rc/rc0/input13
[    1.719068] rc0: Budget-CI dvb ir receiver saa7146 (0) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.4/0000:03:00.0/0000:04:01.0/rc/rc0
[    1.721746] DVB: TDA10023(-1): tda10023_writereg, writereg error (reg == 0x00, val == 0x33, ret == -121)
[    1.771639] DVB: TDA10023(-1): tda10023_readreg: readreg error (reg == 0x1a, ret == -121)

This problem seems to be relatively common with cards containing the TDA10023 chip but I haven't found a proper solution. Is this just a bug or should I adjust something?

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the card works on Windows.

Hardware specs:
Intel Xeon E3-1230v2 CPU
16GB of RAM
ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP motherboard (BIOS/UEFI version seems to be the latest (1.50))
Geforce GTX 650 Ti

Last edited by ormu (2015-04-07 16:01:12)

ormu

Member

Registered: 2013-05-14

Posts: 22

Re: [SOLVED] DVB-C card stopped working (after update?)

Weird, now it's working again after "cold" boot... Could the Windows driver load a different firmware which doesn't work properly on Linux? I think I used the card on Windows just before rebooting to Arch...

$ dmesg | grep -i dvb
[    1.651217] saa7146: register extension 'budget_ci dvb'
[    1.651361] DVB: registering new adapter (TT-Budget C-1501 PCI)
[    1.708299] input: Budget-CI dvb ir receiver saa7146 (0) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.4/0000:03:00.0/0000:04:01.0/rc/rc0/input13
[    1.708338] rc0: Budget-CI dvb ir receiver saa7146 (0) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.4/0000:03:00.0/0000:04:01.0/rc/rc0
[    1.711359] budget_ci dvb 0000:04:01.0: DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Philips TDA10023 DVB-C)...

ku_respawned

Member

Registered: 2016-06-05

Posts: 45

Re: [SOLVED] DVB-C card stopped working (after update?)

Hello, ormu!

I hope, you are still subscribed to this thread, as you don't have your e-mail address provided. It seems like my motherboard is failing and I'm searching for a new one (would need new CPU and RAM as well; am on a very fixed budget). I found an ideal match on Ebay, with the same ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP motherboard, as you have (or had). However, when I researched its compatibility to Linux, I found out that it has an ASM1085 PCIe2PCI-Bridge, which, through some fault in IRQ handling, makes PCI cards work very slowly (or even stop working) within minutes after first starting to use them, making working with them impossible. There are many threads on Kernel's Bugzilla on those chips (ASM1083/1085 are both affected and were very popular with motherboard manufacturers some years ago), saying that this problem would never get fixed and that it also affects Windows. I found a Russian thread on that motherboard's Linux compatibility, with a message, telling that there was a patch for it (it's also mentioned on Bugzilla), but for some reason it didn't find its way into the vanilla kernel, it was used in Fedora's kernel for some time, but then it was dismissed from it, as well. I've also read that, at least for Windows, those problems were fixed in some cases (I've read it about those chips in general, not about this motherboard in particular), maybe after a driver or UEFI update.

Now I see, though, that you were using a PCI card with it, without any problems, in Linux, too. Did you ever have any troubles with PCI cards, besides that one (which has resolved itself)? Have you used other PCI cards with it?

And did you ever have any other problems with this motherboard, both in Linux and in Windows?

I have a pretty expensive PCI audio interface that I really need, when I bought it 3-4 years ago, there weren't any alternatives fitting my needs, at least, below a 5-10 times higher price.

And since it's a private Ebay user offering it (the upgrade set), I couldn't return it even if I do experience problems. So, I really hope that you'll see that message and could answer my questions before it gets sold.

But your post sure gave me hope again.

ormu

Member

Registered: 2013-05-14

Posts: 22

Re: [SOLVED] DVB-C card stopped working (after update?)

Hello, ormu!

I hope, you are still subscribed to this thread, as you don't have your e-mail address provided. It seems like my motherboard is failing and I'm searching for a new one (would need new CPU and RAM as well; am on a very fixed budget). I found an ideal match on Ebay, with the same ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP motherboard, as you have (or had). However, when I researched its compatibility to Linux, I found out that it has an ASM1085 PCIe2PCI-Bridge, which, through some fault in IRQ handling, makes PCI cards work very slowly (or even stop working) within minutes after first starting to use them, making working with them impossible. There are many threads on Kernel's Bugzilla on those chips (ASM1083/1085 are both affected and were very popular with motherboard manufacturers some years ago), saying that this problem would never get fixed and that it also affects Windows. I found a Russian thread on that motherboard's Linux compatibility, with a message, telling that there was a patch for it (it's also mentioned on Bugzilla), but for some reason it didn't find its way into the vanilla kernel, it was used in Fedora's kernel for some time, but then it was dismissed from it, as well. I've also read that, at least for Windows, those problems were fixed in some cases (I've read it about those chips in general, not about this motherboard in particular), maybe after a driver or UEFI update.

Now I see, though, that you were using a PCI card with it, without any problems, in Linux, too. Did you ever have any troubles with PCI cards, besides that one (which has resolved itself)? Have you used other PCI cards with it?

And did you ever have any other problems with this motherboard, both in Linux and in Windows?

I have a pretty expensive PCI audio interface that I really need, when I bought it 3-4 years ago, there weren't any alternatives fitting my needs, at least, below a 5-10 times higher price.

And since it's a private Ebay user offering it (the upgrade set), I couldn't return it even if I do experience problems. So, I really hope that you'll see that message and could answer my questions before it gets sold.

But your post sure gave me hope again.

Hi,

I haven't had, or at least noticed, any problems with this motherboard. The DVB card also works fine on Linux, even after several hours of use. I haven't used any other PCI cards, only this DVB card (and Geforce GTX 650 Ti but it's PCIe).

On Windows, the DVB card gives artifacts when watched using ProgDVB. These artifacts disappear if I boot the computer to Linux and then straight back to Windows. I'm not sure when this problem occurred for the first time but it's not very serious for me. I've heard about some other people having had similar problems with this card. I suppose that the Linux driver loads a properly working firmware or configuration while the Windows driver does not.

One thing to note: my computer boots in legacy BIOS mode, not in (U)EFI mode. When I was installing the OSes, I accidentally chose legacy mode but because it worked I didn't change it.

Last edited by ormu (2016-06-14 16:08:51)