How to make Puppy load USB DVB Avermedia Volar firmware?

Problems and successes with specific brands/models of computer video hardware
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arfon
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How to make Puppy load USB DVB Avermedia Volar firmware?

#1 Post by arfon »

Help I need a backdoor trick to modify the vendor/product list for usb such that it loads specific firmware for my dvb device!

How can I persuade my Puppy to accept a slightly different Product/Vendor ID lis? I'm not really capable of compiling kernel stuff but was hoping I could search/replace some lookup table that has the definition of which usb the kernel recognizes.

I have an usb avermedia dvb-t called Volar Red (seems to be common in France only). This device is very similar to the Volar Black with which a few Puppies have had success including John Lewis. My problem is that the Volar Red has a slightly different Product ID and so, I believe, that Puppy is not recognizing the device because of this variation.

Volar Black is vendor:product = 07ca:850a
Volar Red is vendor:product = 07ca:850b (b instead of a)
(dmesg confirms this for the latter)

From what I've read on translated French linux posting the same firmware will work for both and I already have the af9015 firmware in my Puppy's lib.

Any suggestions would be most welcome

Thanks

DVB device works fine with XP
I use puppeee 1.0 on an eeepc 901 and fluppy 13 on other laptops

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Flash
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#2 Post by Flash »

I can't answer your question but I have one for you: what's a DVB?

John Lewis
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Location: Albany West Australia

#3 Post by John Lewis »

Hi arfon,

You were in luck as I've not looked in here for a quite a while. Its so long back I've almost forgotten how I set this all up.

The first thing to do is to let me know which version of Puppy.

I don't know if your stick should make a difference but we'll see.

The second thing is unplug and plug in your stick, then in terminal do dmesg.
Down near the bottom you should see some stuff about the stick being plugged in. You could paste that into a post so I can see what it says.

The third thing to do is to run lsmod in terminal you should hopefully see the some stuff similar to this
dvb_usb_af9015 20263 0
dvb_usb 10428 1 dvb_usb_af9015
dvb_core 62022 1 dvb_usb

We are looking to see if the driver is loaded. I think newer versions of puppy have the necessary drivers anyway. Perhaps the red stick uses a different driver so you may see something a bit different.

I have been having trouble with my stick and I think it is a poor USB connection on the small end. I fiddled it around a bit and plugged in again and it came good. Mine of course is a few years old now. I know also that it won't work with the supplied antenna here. It's worse than wet string and only functions on one channel.

Flash. DVB stands for Digital Video Broadcasting. DVB-T is Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial and is what we are using the USB stick receiver for.

John

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Flash
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#4 Post by Flash »

So it's a TV tuner that plugs into a USB port?

John Lewis
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Location: Albany West Australia

#5 Post by John Lewis »

I'm a mug. After replying I couldn't find the post so I have now posted it again back over in the how to section.

Duh.

Lets keep it here I'll edit the other to point here.

John

John Lewis
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Location: Albany West Australia

#6 Post by John Lewis »

Hi arfon again,
I'm having a slow day. Age is catching up I think.
Rereading your post I'm beginning to think that you may have an antenna problem.
I'll be pleased to look at your dmesg and lsmod though to satisfy myself. If they are OK then it will probably be antenna and tuning which of course won't work if the antenna is inadequate.

I can look out my window and see the antennas for all our channels but the little provided whip will only work on SBS and no others. I plug in a different antenna and I get all channels.

John
Last edited by John Lewis on Wed 11 Jan 2012, 07:57, edited 1 time in total.

John Lewis
Posts: 148
Joined: Mon 03 Dec 2007, 10:19
Location: Albany West Australia

#7 Post by John Lewis »

Flash wrote:So it's a TV tuner that plugs into a USB port?
Yes that is correct.

The one I have looks like this. Not very good image but you get the idea.

http://www.amazon.de/AVerMedia-AVerTV-V ... B001MM5TMO

John

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arfon
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#8 Post by arfon »

Hi John

Thanks for your help. My antenna and device are fine, thanks. Both work perfectly for win xp. I just need a better system.

I use puppeee 1.0 on an eeepc 901 and fluppy 13 on other laptops
usb 1-2.1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
usb 1-2.1: New USB device found, idVendor=07ca, idProduct=850b
usb 1-2.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-2.1: Product: A850 DVBT
usb 1-2.1: Manufacturer: AVerMedia
usb 1-2.1: SerialNumber: 302797200619000
input: AVerMedia A850 DVBT as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-2/1-2.1/1-2.1:1.1/input/input9
generic-usb 0003:07CA:850B.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.01 Keyboard [AVerMedia A850 DVBT] on usb-0000:00:1d.7-2.1/input1
usbcore: registered new interface driver dvb_usb_af9015
That last line about the core didn't used to appear, but I added my product id to a modules-alias file. Maybe that helped ?

I don't get any lines starting dvb in my dmesg though.

Code: Select all

# lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
dvb_usb_af9015         22239  0 
dvb_usb                12149  1 dvb_usb_af9015
dvb_core               74351  1 dvb_usb
Sorry if this seems messy, need to rush off to work but will be back this evening

Thanks
Arfon
[url]http://www.arfon.com/[/url]

John Lewis
Posts: 148
Joined: Mon 03 Dec 2007, 10:19
Location: Albany West Australia

#9 Post by John Lewis »

Hi arfon,

Noted on your antenna etc.

Looking at your dmesg it seems that the stick has been recognized.
It is not however connecting .

Here is some of my dmesg section from Puppeee. I think 4 but should be similar. I have video running in this one.

usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=07ca, idProduct=850a
usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-2: Product: A850 DVBT
usb 1-2: Manufacturer: AVerMedia
usb 1-2: SerialNumber: 301937000260000
dvb-usb: found a 'AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850)' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
usb 1-2: firmware: requesting dvb-usb-af9015.fw
dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-af9015.fw'
dvb-usb: found a 'AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850)' in warm state.
dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
DVB: registering new adapter (AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850))
af9013: firmware version:4.95.0
DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Afatech AF9013 DVB-T)...
MXL5005S: Attached at address 0xc6
dvb-usb: AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850) successfully initialized and connected

Compare yours.

usb 1-2.1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
usb 1-2.1: New USB device found, idVendor=07ca, idProduct=850b
usb 1-2.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-2.1: Product: A850 DVBT
usb 1-2.1: Manufacturer: AVerMedia
usb 1-2.1: SerialNumber: 302797200619000
input: AVerMedia A850 DVBT as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-2/1-2.1/1-2.1:1.1/input/input9
generic-usb 0003:07CA:850B.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.01 Keyboard [AVerMedia A850 DVBT] on usb-0000:00:1d.7-2.1/input1
usbcore: registered new interface driver dvb_usb_af9015

As you can see there is a whole section missing where it sets up

dvb-usb: found a 'AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850)' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
usb 1-2: firmware: requesting dvb-usb-af9015.fw
dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-af9015.fw'
dvb-usb: found a 'AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850)' in warm state.
dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.

This suggests that you do not have the file 'dvb-usb-af9015.fw'

You should find it in /lib/firmware

The next step is to see if that file exists.
Can you please go look in /lib/firmware and let me know what you find.

John

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arfon
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#10 Post by arfon »

Hiya

Yes got that firrmware file in my /lib/firmware

I'm almost convinced that I need to teach the kernel that my product id, 850b, is the same as your product id, 850a. (I inferred this from postings on a French Linux forum)

Is your dmesg from puppeee ? I saw the other thread where you said...
I also have it working with jemimah's puppeee 1.0 . Nice thing was I didn't need to install the drivers or xine. Did all the other steps and it worked straight up.
Cheers
Arfon
[url]http://www.arfon.com/[/url]

John Lewis
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Location: Albany West Australia

#11 Post by John Lewis »

Hi Arfon,
The dmesg was from a later one of Jemimahs Puppeees
I will have to see if I can find a copy of Puppeee 1.0 and set it up again.

If you have the necessary files there is a fw fine and a ko file as I recall but as you point out the needed files are in Puppeee 1.0. I do need to go back and read the posts to refresh my memory.

If you have followed the steps in the How To and it is not working then perhaps you do need to change the product ID. The stick seems to be recognized tough and just not loading the firmware.

Bear with me and I will see what I can do in the next day or two. Could you point me at the posts in the French forum please so I can have a look at what they say. My french is only what I learned many years ago at school and pretty rusty but with the help of Google translate I will be fine.

John

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arfon
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#12 Post by arfon »

http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.ph ... 8#p3554168

http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?id=374312

I think these guys are talking about recompiling - which is beyond what I wanted to do.

Hence why I was looking for a back-door to edit my existing files replacing 850a with 850b ? But that was based on a text file assumption.

Thanks Again
Arfon
[url]http://www.arfon.com/[/url]

John Lewis
Posts: 148
Joined: Mon 03 Dec 2007, 10:19
Location: Albany West Australia

#13 Post by John Lewis »

Well arfon.

I have had a look at that French site. It seems to me they are talking about compiling in V4L2 DVB I think it was, to the kernel. As this is already in Puppy 1.0 that shouldn't matter.
Also I don't think it makes any difference that your device id is 850b.

By the way the puppy I was using was 1.0 from Jemimah.
I have created it again on another card and reinstalled everything following my How To instructions. More on that in a moment.

There are two things I was thinking of in your case to check.
1. Perhaps the dvb-usb-af9015.fw is faulty. Perhap replace it if you can find one.

2. Did you, in teminal, run MAKEDEV-DVB.sh to create the device nodes?

Back to my test.
I went to the scanaid directory and brought up a terminal. I typed ./Create_Scanning_Table and chose all as I don't know the exact details of local channels.

I plugged in the stick and ran
scan Scanlist.txt >/root/.xine/channel.conf

Again I chose that it try all frequencies. I takes ages. I had no luck.

Went and looked at the hidden files in root and there was no .xine directory.

I installed it from install's multimedia section. It didn't have all dependencies so I let it look for them and downloaded from ibiblio. I allowed it to trim the fat. Now I had the .xine directory. There is no menu entry.

I did the scan Scanlist.txt thing again and it worked. I looked in .xine folder and found channel.conf with all the detected channels.

I opened the Gtb-DVB viewer and channels were present. gxine came up too. I clicked a channel and away it went.

I have a suggestion. If you pm me a postal address I will mail you this working sd card.
You will need to do the channel scan thing of course. It should help prove whether the problem is in the stick or not at least by seeing what dmesg show

John

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arfon
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#14 Post by arfon »

Hi john

Thanks for looking at those french links.

I have tried the latest dvb-usb-af9015.fw (4.95.0) in case the default puppeee 1.0 was different - but no difference. I also tried replacing the ko file but again no difference

I've posted the MAKEDEV below - but until I get one line starting "dvb-usb ...." in dmesg I don't think I can progress.
# MAKEDEV-DVB.sh
Creating DVB devices in /dev/dvb/adapter0
chown: unknown user/group root:video
Creating DVB devices in /dev/dvb/adapter1
chown: unknown user/group root:video
Creating DVB devices in /dev/dvb/adapter2
chown: unknown user/group root:video
Creating DVB devices in /dev/dvb/adapter3
chown: unknown user/group root:video
#
I'm clearing out my save file eeesave*.2fs putting puppeee back to initial state and will have one last play with new firmware and modules. Thereafter I'll buy a 850a (like yours) or something that has worked in puppy before (and is not limited to the french market).

Thanks again for your support.
Arfon
[url]http://www.arfon.com/[/url]

John Lewis
Posts: 148
Joined: Mon 03 Dec 2007, 10:19
Location: Albany West Australia

#15 Post by John Lewis »

Hi arfon,

The MAKEDEV looks OK.

If you look in the dev you should see a folder labeled dvb with the adapters listed in it if the make dev was successful.

I was told that some of these Avermedia sticks had a different chip and hence needed a different firmware driver. I wonder if that is the case with yours? How can we find out? that is the question.

I couldn't find an Aviamedia red with Google to try to find what driver it needs.

It could well be that the problem is the wrong driver as we are just assuming it uses the same one as the black. Perhaps the needed driver isn't in Puppy. On that French forum they were discussing Ubuntu.

Checking out the correct driver may be what is needed to try next.

This site seems to be the French site stuff in English. Part way down they show dmesg

http://patchwork.linuxtv.org/patch/4471/

Reading through this quickly it seems we do have the correct driver. Need to study this further I think.

John

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