*BSD News Article 96080


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From: Henrik Andersson <anehen-6@student.luth.se>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Bt848 framegrabbers (Hauppauge or Miro) ?
Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 12:20:15 +0200
Organization: Me, myself and I
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I'm probably going to buy either a Miro MEDIA PCTV card or
an Hauppauge Win/TV PCI. Both are based on the Bt 848.

I got a letter from a friend (listed below) but it doesn't 
mention support for the Miro board.

Does anyone know if FreeBSD or Linux have support for the
Miro board ?

The reason I would like to try the Miro board instead of
the Hauppauge board is that it seems the the Hauppauge
board fail to run at anything higher then the normal 33MHz
PCI-clock. 37.5 and 41.5MHz PCI busses is pretty normal
these days. Deos anyone know if the Miro board support
more then 33MHz PCI ?

Which one is the best to use with FreeBSD or Linux,
and win95 ?

Send a mail/comment to me if you want to share your
experience about these boards with me.

----------------------------------------------------
Hi Guys,

Till now the Matrox Metor or OmniMedia P1sc where pretty much the choice
for doing video stuff for FreeBSD and Linux. There is a bug with the 
Philips SAA 7116 and SAA 7196 based cards ( Meteor and P1sc cards) 
which when they do YUV12 dma transfer they lock  up a PPRO . 
The problem is a PCI incompatibility at the chip level. 
However there is a software work around if yuv packed mode is used as 
supposed to yuv planar mode which requires multiple dma transfers as
supposed 1 dma transfer per frame for yuv packed mode. 

Not too long ago I wrote a driver for Bt848 PCI cards which includes:
1. Intel Smart Video Recorder III
2. STB PC TV
3. Hauppauge's Wincast/TV

Additionally, the Bt848 PCI is fully PCI-2.1 compliant which the
Philips SAA 7116 is not -- in other words the Bt848 will not lock
up your system during yuv planar frame capture.

The bt848 driver is now part of FreeBSD 3.0-current so if you feel like
looking
the driver is in /sys/pci . To linux enthusiasts if you like, it should
not be a big deal to port to linux -- minor point the Bt848 driver
mantains a high degree of compatibility with the FreeBSD Matrox Meteor
driver in fact I used the exact same ioctl interface.

You can get an older version of the driver with details about the driver
and module for vic :
ftp://rah.star-gate.com/pub/bt848-0.3.tar.gz

There is also a FreeBSD Bt848 project with links to applications such
dtv which does PCI to PCI transfer for very smooth video playback.
Applications which support the tuner found in the STB PC Tv or
Hauppage's
Wincast/TV , Stand alone tuner, etc...

http://freebsd.org/~fsmp/HomeAuto/Bt848.html

The mailing list for ongoing multimedia or bt848 support for FreeBSD is:
multimedia@freebsd.org


So what is the big deal about BrookTree's Bt848 based cards?

        They are cheap , cheap and then cheaper 8)
        And these babies can do 640x480 32bit at 30 fps with no sweat

        Actually you can have two in your system doing 640x480 16bit at
        30fps with no sweat 8)

Wincast has a model which sells for $100 .
The ones with tuner circuitry usually sell for $139 and up.

If you are interested on one of the above mentioned cards just surf the
web for the latest prices because I don't keep up -- I mean I bought my
Intel Smart Video Recorder III a few months ago .

        Have fun guys,
        Amancio


>From The Desk Of Thomas Pfenning :
> It is the Matrox Meteor. To answer the question about problems with the
> Meteor and Pentium Pro machines. The Meteor has a known bug in the PCI
> interface that is exposed by the Natoma chipset in PPro machines.
> Someone found a hack around it by switching to a special packed data
> format that does exhibit the malicious timing behavior but this really
> sounds like a hack
> 
> However, it works just great on Pentiums.
> 
> Cheers
> 
>       Thomas
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:       Peter H. Tebault [SMTP:petert@aimnet.com]
> > Sent:       Wednesday, March 12, 1997 11:09 PM
> > To: Joao Carlos Mendes Luis
> > Cc: Daniel Gueniche; mbone@ISI.EDU
> > Subject:    Re: video card
> > 
> > Joao Carlos Mendes Luis wrote:
> > 
> >   #define quoting(Daniel Gueniche)
> >   ; bonjour,
> >   ;
> >   ; Could someone recomend a video card for a PC with PCI bus under
> >   W95, NT or
> >   ; Linux, compatible with vat&nv or vic for use with mbone?
> > 
> >   Try the Matrox Meteor.  FreeBSD has support for it, to do exactly
> >   what you want, and I know Linux has copied the driver.  Check it
> >   first, but I think this is the only PCI solution 'til now.
> > 
> >                                           Jonny
> > 
> >   --
> >   Joao Carlos Mendes Luis                 jonny@gta.ufrj.br
> >   +55 21 290-4698 ( Job )                 jonny@cisi.coppe.ufrj.br
> >   Network Manager                         UFRJ/COPPE/CISI
> >   Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
> > 
> >  Correction: Matrox Millenium
> > 
> > Peace,
> > Pete
> > --
> > =============================================
> > Peter H. Tebault, Student - petert@aimnet.com
> > fax 510 440 1770 ------ 1996 Neon Sport Coupe
> > =============================================


------------------------------------------------

References:

http://www.miro.com/e/e2-products/products.html
http://www.hauppauge.com/html/wc_data.htm


-- 
    /Henrik

mailto:anehen-6@student.luth.se
http://hinken.campus.luth.se (bla köpes o säljes)
http://www.ludd.luth.se/users/d91-han (bla köpes o säljes)