Adaptec AVC-2410

From IVTV

A warning for Ubuntu users at the bottom of this guide.

The PCI version of this card is supported. These video capture cards are not more complicated to setup than other ivtv supported capture cards, this page gives details of some of things you would need to do with other cards, but are slightly different.

ivtv does not support USB devices but a driver is available, please refer to message: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/ivtv/users/26487

The latest revision of ivtv currently supports the Adaptec AVC2410 and AVC2010, however in case you have problems ivtv-0.4.4 definitely works on my system.

I've had reports of MythDora 2.32 and MythDora 3.1 working without eny extra configuring (no remote support yet)

After installing ivtv you need to extract the firmware. An easy way to obtain the driver from which you extract the firmware is to go to the Adaptec site http://www.adaptec.com/ and select "Support"/"Downloads". Click on "video" then the link for your card. Download the driver version you want to a directory on your Linux machine. Then use the "unzip" command to obtain the file avcpwilo.sys. For example:

 unzip avc2010_drv_v121.exe avcpwilo.sys
 Archive:  avc2010_drv_v121.exe
 inflating: avcpwilo.sys

I don't know if this has been fixed, but to extract the firmware from this file I edited ivtvfwextract.pl by creating a directory tmp, then changing $tmpdir to /home/mythtv/tmp and $fw_driver_name = "avcpwilo.sys". Then in the directory /home/mythtv I created a gzipped version of avcpwilo.sys, copied avcpwilo.sys into tmp, I then ran:

 ivtvfwextract2.pl avcpwilo.sys.gz ./enc.img ./dec.img

New Note : Included is a pastebin of a working version of the script listed. The original guide forgot to mention that two lines need to be commented out, otherwise it continually deletes your tmp directory. As I'm going to assume most users have no idea how perl works, this script should save you the trouble. Save it as ivtvfwextract2.pl in /usr/bin : http://pastebin.com/f11814d3b

I then copied enc.img to /lib/hotplug/firmware/v4l-cx2341x-enc.fw and dec.img to /lib/hotplug/firmware/v4l-cx2341x-dec.fw

(Hugh has a system with a Hauppauge PVR 150, 250, and an AVC-2410. This would seem to be a problem because the firmware for each must be placed at the same pathname. Luckily, the Hauppauge firmware seems to work for the Adaptec card.)

At this point for the AVC-2010 I bellieve you just need to:

 modprobe ivtv

For the AVC-2410 if it is a little bit more complicated:

Once everything is installed you need to load the modules

I use a script to load the modules:

 #! /bin/sh
 modprobe tuner ignore=0,0x6b
 modprobe ivtv ivtv_std=2  #for PAL
 sleep 1
 ivtvctl -q0  #set audio input to tuner
 ivtvctl -p4  #set video input to tuner
 modprobe lirc_i2c
 sleep 1
 lircd -d /dev/lirc0 --permission=666

The current version of lirc should be compatible with the avc-2410

The tuner kernel module requires the ignore parameter in the script above because otherwise the infra-red remote control chip is detected as a tuner. The ignore parameter is partially documented in the kernel Documentation/i2c/writing-clients file. It takes a list of pairs. The first in each pair is an i2c bus number (or -1 for any bus) and the second is the I2C address to be ignored (not probed).

The ivtv_std=2 is required, because unlike the hauppauge cards there is no eprom to read the hardware configuration from. ivtv_std=2 sets ivtv to use PAL and automatically sets the tuner to type 38 (FM1216ME) The AVC-2410/EU (Europe) version of the card works with tuner type 38 and although it is for the FM1216ME MK3 it works with the FQ1216ME/I H-3 tuner on the card. The NTSC (American) version of this card uses the Phillips FQ1236/F H-3 tuner and works with tuner type 43 this is set automatically when you set ivtv_std=1 (NTSC); in fact, this option seems to be the default so it need not be specified. The AVC-2410/JA (Japan) version of the card, uses the FQ1286/F H-3 tuner and I believe should work with tuner type 53, you will need to set tuner=53, currently untested.

To set the audio and video inputs to the stereo and composite input ports on the rear of the card:

 ivtvctl -q1  #set audio input to stereo jack
 ivtvctl -p3  #set video input to composite port

For Hugh, on Fedora Core 5, in an NTSC country, with multiple tuner cards, some of which are AVC-2410s, the following command in /etc/modprobe.conf seemed to work. Everything else was the same as had already been set up for the Hauppauge cards. Note that examination of dmesg output showed that 0x6b was not being used for other cards. No ivtvctl commands were needed. Hugh did not try using lirc.

 option tuner ignore=-1,0x6b

I would be pleased hear from anyone trying to get their Adaptec card working, my email is trev.email at btinternet.com

Warning to Ubuntu & Fedora users.

As of 2008, Ubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 8 do not require any of the firmware downloads or special setup (for Fedora you can just fetch the ivtv-firmware package). Simply properly set up MythTV and the Tuners/Video Sources and the card will work just fine. (at least in the US within NTSC, and in the UK with PAL). In fact, some of the instructions listed here will break features temporarily (until they're undone). This may also apply to most modern distros.