New port: pvrxxx for Hauppauge PVR150/500

[Rick C. Petty]

On Sat, Oct 14, 2006 at 06:57:36PM -0500, B Briggs wrote:
> Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:
> 
> Yes, according to usleep, it is. But when I reboot into my win2k 
> partition to use the device, there is also a long delay, albeit, it 
> doesn't let me know what's happening, so I assume it's doing same.
> 
> The last time I timed it, it was 27 seconds without a prompt.

It is doing the same thing.

> I haven't looked at the code, but maybe it could query the eeprom to see 
> what the revision is, then skip the firmware upload if it doesn't need 
> updating.

You don't have a choice.  AFAIK, the chip onboard the card needs to be
programmed-- the firmware isn't stored anywhere.  This is typical for
things like this (win modems, etc.) where it's easier to ship the firmware
on CD than it is to re-burn the eeprom/flash..  or at least cheaper.

> If the box is up 24/7 normally, the delay isn't so bad; but using 
> FreeBSD, I'm just not used to that big of a lag - you're right - 'kind 
> of scary'.

Not really-- when other devices are being loaded, there is a pause while
the kernel is programming certain devices, such as some SCSI cards (and I
think even some ATA cards).  It's just that in those cases the delay is
short because the firmware download is fast (DMA, full 32-bit, etc.) and
with the PVR cards, it's done over the I2C bus so timing is critical.  I
suppose it's possible to rewrite our I2C stuff to buffer everything, but
that would be a lot of work.

-- Rick C. Petty