Rebooting problems with /dev/cxm0

[Erin E Conn]

> I had a similar problem with my Pentium 133MHz:
> When I used "cat /dev/cxm0" and piped it via a NIC to another box, the pvr box
> halted without rebooting (at least for some minutes - then i pushed the reset
> button). Somehow it felt like the read requests from /dev/cxm0 must be issued
> quite often and regularily and the read requests from /dev/cxm0 should not be
> limited in size (1MB works fine, while 1 byte crashes almost immediately (e. g.
> "dd if=/dev/cxm0 of=/dev/null bs=1 count=1000"))... Furthermore the power
> saving features should be disabled in my box, I think (I did not test it
> thoroughly - at least whenever the power saving started the box crashed, when I
> read from /dev/cxm0 at that time)... :-) 
> 
> Since I split the reading from cxm0 and transfering to hard disc (partially via
> network) in two processes, that use 8 or about 8 buffers (each 2MB or about
> 2MB), I do not have this problem (61 days uptime... :-)) And each day at least
> 3h of reading from /dev/cxm0 - at most days much more: 6h or so).
> 
> Maybe that helps (e. g.: just try to do "dd if=/dev/cxm0 of=/dev/null bs=1m
> count=1000").

I'm not quite sure I understand what is meant here. My machine does not 
crash when I try the above dd command, but that may also be simply 
because at a count of 1000 it's not accessing my card long enough for 
whatever condition is causing my machine to lock up to occur. I'm trying 
a longer count now and it has not crashed so far, but I'm not sure how 
to apply this to practical viewing. How are you splitting the reading 
into 2 processes, and are you able to watch live TV using this method?

Also, I am not using the network in any capacity, everything is 
happening locally on one machine.

--Erin