OK, here's another version.....

http://www.retroreview.com/iang/AmiTV_20050122.lha

I think that the problem about interrupts crashing the system is exactly the
same problem as the display not always appearing. It seems that the only flag
that crashes the Amiga is on bit 18 of the interrupt - any other flags seem
to be fine. Unfortunately bit 18 is the flag that reports an invalid RISC
instruction, which seems to be what's happening when the screen stays black.

So, one quick dirty and nasty hack later, I have a version which will keep
hacking away at it until it gets a clean signal _as long as_ the window is Active.

Remember:
Click anywhere in the window (not the titlebar) to exit.
Use Up/Down to switch input signals (no tuner yet!)
Be patient! Sometimes it'll take a few seconds to sync!
This version expects a PAL signal!
I've only tested it on my WinTV Go! Bt878 card - Bt848 should work also though.

It also eats CPU time at the moment because I don't have overlay support so I'm
still using BltBitmapRastPort().

Comments please!

@Spirantho

Time to reinstall the Hercules tv card again .

@Spirantho

cheers dood, will have a look asap zulu.

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@Spirantho

this is awesome! a friend gave me a tv tuner card about 2 months ago and ever since i've been waiting for software to use it on my a1. well, this thread just popped up, and I see you were posting in august, so its been under development for awhile now without me knowing. :) anyway, my tv card uses the BT878 chipset. I havent read the whole thread yet, but I'm not sure how to use this software. I've plugged in my aerial and run the program, but I just get a blue screen with slight glitches here and there.. I'm assuming its displaying that instead of static when theres no signal present.. I'm not sure how to change channels, or if thats implemented yet. It crashes if I try do to much, like if I click in the window, or after about 20 seconds of use...

it's a promising start though. I'm looking forwards to a usable release. keep up the good work!! I cant wait to use it.

@Spirantho

Quote:

OK, here's another version..... http://www.retroreview.com/iang/AmiTV_20050122.lha I think that the problem about interrupts crashing the system is exactly the same problem as the display not always appearing. It seems that the only flag that crashes the Amiga is on bit 18 of the interrupt - any other flags seem to be fine. Unfortunately bit 18 is the flag that reports an invalid RISC instruction, which seems to be what's happening when the screen stays black.

Great news. Now I'll have to see if I can find that card. I think it's either in my PC at home, or sitting next to it.

Thanks for continuing your efforts.

Dave M.

@Spirantho

Just reinstalled the TV card into the A1 to test AmiTV. I connected our CD32 to the tv card via the composite and S-Video connectors. Under composite it works fine (albeit abit dark at the moment). Still it seems AmiTV is much faster than the previous version. A screenshot can be found here:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=186

The only time I managed to crash it was when switching between input signals, (but this has so far only happened once- heck it has happened on a x86 machine here too).

All in all great work mate .

A small update...

http://www.retroreview.com/iang/AmiTV_20050122a.lha

I think I have made the Bt8x8 chip talk to my tuner! However, I'm not
entirely sure, so if people could try this and let me know the debug output
please (iang@pcnet.org - but of course replace the pc with amiga!) I'd be
grateful.

Incidentally, there is now a funky new featurette in this version! If you specify
"Bt848" on the command line it will look for a Bt848 based card first, if you
specify "Bt878", it'll look for that first! What possible use is that? It means
that if you have both cards in your system you can have 2 TV windows at once!
Nice hey? (And yes it does work! I tried it!)

@Spirantho

the tuner changes the channels, right? how do you make it use the tuner? what keys etc?

@jahc

Ah, sorry - I misled you.

By "talking to the tuner" I meant just that.... I didn't mean you could actually
do anything useful with it. :)

The debug output tells me though if the tuner has been found, so at least then
I know I'm heading in the right direction.

@Spirantho

Oh okay. well, this is part of the shell output from my bt878 card:

Locating tuner on Bt878....I2C returned 0x21e87f8.
Tuner Found at 0xc0!


so it looks like the detection is working!

when do you think you'll be able to make a working tuner?

@Spirantho

and here i was pressing every key on my keyboard trying to get it working

@Spirantho

cool..i must put this card in right away.

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@Spirantho

opk..tested,..works fine...doesnt crash (had it running for quite some time..

problems:

Dark ... (should be relative easy to fix i guess)
Slow (hard to fix? , the update speed is slow and i guess its not touching dma atm either or?)


anyway cool stuff and thanx!



some output :

AmiTV 21/01/05.
Found WinTV card 0x109e 0x36e!
Configured Bt878.
Locked OK!
Device capabilities: 3.
Device initialised OK!
Setting PCI configuration to enable memory access....
Status is 0x6019002.
Status is 0x6019002.
PCI Latency is 0x0.
Memory space is at 0x0x88101000.
Cleared DMA CTL to 0x4000000.
Luma is at 0xd8.
Added interrupt 16 with result 1.
Interrupt status is 0x200020e.
PC before starting is 0x2908b9c, should be0x28ba300.
Vendor ID is 0x0.
Setting Bt878 input.
Current Status is 0x96.
Input device: 0x1b.
Width: 768. Height: 576.
HDelay: 0x78 VDelay: 0x16,
Program being created at 0x0x28ba300.
Created 3468 instructions.
Status before starting is 0x16.
PC before starting is 0x28ba314, should be0x0x28ba300.
PC is now 0x0x28ba314.
DMA Control is 0x70000.
Output enable is 0x0x000000.
Command status is 0x106.
Status is 0x290.
Interrupt status is 0x204122f.
Interrupt Status is 0x0xa00120c.
Interrupt shows a FIFO overrun - dropping DWORDS.

Interrupt Mask is 0x0x0bc810.

Last edited by Toaks on 22-Jan-2005 at 02:48 PM.

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@Toaks

The slowness could be due to not using overlay? In linux I found that using xvideo greatly speeded up things.

@Bodie

dma too, i use this tvcard in my mediator and it fly there...
its just a matter of time before amitv gets real good imho!

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@Spirantho

I have 2 878 based cards but can't seem to get anything am I perhaps doing something wrong. I have a Wnfast card with a Fusion 878 and an older PixelView with a bt878KHF. Here is the output when I start Amitv

Current Status is 0x94.
Input device: 0x1b.
Width: 768. Height: 576.
HDelay: 0x78 VDelay: 0x16,
Program being created at 0x0x20fb740.
Created 3468 instructions.
Status before starting is 0x15.
PC before starting is 0x20fb754, should be0x0x20fb740.
PC is now 0x0x20fb754.
DMA Control is 0x70000.
Output enable is 0x0x000000.
Command status is 0x106.
Status is 0x290.
Interrupt status is 0xd304122f.
Interrupt Status is 0x0xdb00120c.
Interrupt shows a FIFO overrun - dropping DWORDS.

Interrupt Mask is 0x0x0bc810.

I have hooked up a video player to act as a tuner but can't seem to get any output apart from a bluse screen or a screen with many dots. Any ideas?

cheers
ace

@acefnq

use UP and DOWN to track around in the ports.

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@Toaks

Got it. The problem was my video player, the tuner has obviously gone on that, plugged in a dvd player (that is also knackered but show a startup screen) and plugged it in through SVHS and away it went although the bckground was black instead of blue but who cares i have progress.

cheers
ace

@Spirantho

I don't know if this will do you any good. It's from a DVD player SVideo output. At least the screen(window) opens with a size consistent with the resolution shown below. I don't know anything about SVideo specs, but the composite output on my DVD play is NTSC. For now, I'm assuming that the reason I can't get anything but a black or dark blue screen is because it isn't PAL.

Thanks.

Dave M.


AmiTV 22/01/05.
Found Bt878-based WinTV card 0x109e 0x36e!
Configured Bt878.
Locked OK!
Device capabilities: 3.
Device initialised OK!
Setting PCI configuration to enable memory access....
Status is 0x6019002.
Status is 0x6019002.
PCI Latency is 0x80.
Memory space is at 0x0x8c101000.
Cleared DMA CTL to 0x0.
Luma is at 0xd8.
Interrupt status is 0x22000226.
Locating tuner on Bt878....I2C returned 0x4754898.
Tuner Found at 0xc0!
Added interrupt 16 with result 1.
Interrupt status is 0x22000226.
PC before starting is 0x45a7b1c, should be0x46d9540.
Vendor ID is 0x0.
Setting Bt878 input.
Current Status is 0xb4.
Input device: 0x1b.
Width: 768. Height: 576.
HDelay: 0x78 VDelay: 0x16,
Program being created at 0x0x46d9540.
Created 3468 instructions.
Status before starting is 0x14.
PC before starting is 0x46d9554, should be0x0x46d9540.
PC is now 0x0x46d9554.
DMA Control is 0x70000.
Output enable is 0x0x000000.
Command status is 0x106.
Status is 0x290.
Interrupt status is 0x22041227.

Well, I was partly wrong.

I do get an image, if I use the up cursor once. The previous time I tried that it hung. However, the image is multiple and in black and white. Again I assume because my output is NTSC, rather than PAL.

Dave M.

Last edited by dimmck on 23-Jan-2005 at 04:35 AM.

Yup, that's it, it's because you're using NTSC.

I still need to work on NTSC support, for some reason it doesn't behaeve as well as PAL.

Incidentally, IIRC only the Bt848 will detect the tuner at the moment (at least on the public build). I'm currently working on getting the wretched thing to do anything! I know where the tuner is, it's saying "Hello", but it's not actually tuning anything!

For those who aren't aware why it's hard, it's because the tuner is a completely seperate chip, which talks to the Bt8x8 via I2C, a kind of mini serial bus on the card. Very complicated...

Still working on it.... ETA? When it's done! :)