3 or more PVR-250s in the same system

[hufnagel]

Welp...
I'm back to wrestling with this problem again.

Got a trifecta of PVR-250 v16 boards here, (2) Rev B126 and (1) Rev B110.

No matter what slots I put them in, no matter what order I put them in, the 3rd card in the machine always fails to work. Device Mangler reports a 'Code 10. This device cannot start.'

Board works properly if I stick it in another machine and use the LAN to run 3 encoders. I don't want to do this anymore.

Latest Happauge drivers (1.17.390.22029) do no good. Oh, and as of today the listing on their website for 1.18.???.22037 drivers is bubkus... the file has the previous driver files.

Mainboard is an EPoX 8k9a3+ with an Athlon XP 2000+ chip. If ANYONE out there has 3 or more PVR-250 boards working nicely please drop me a line with what mainboard you're using. At this point I'm willing to change it out if it means I can get the 3rd (and possibly a 4th) board working in a single box nicely.

Additionally, if anyone out there wants to swap their v16 RevB126 board for a v16 RevB110 PLEASE give me a holler.

Lastly, if anyone is in the NJ area about 30 miles west of NYC (Union/Essex/Sommerset counties) and would like to bring by a couple boards to mash through this hell I hath wrought with all this, drop me a line and we'll schedule something

-- John

[kny3twalker]

have you tried installing just one of each to see if the problem is there then?

do you know what the difference is between the two cards?

also the driver version is correct
as soon as you install the .exe update over the system driver

it becomes 1.8.22037
(not in the device manager but in the version that hauppauge has made)

have you ever tried installing the driver update after installing the inf?

that could be part of the problem.....

basically install one card in the machine
install inf driver
install driver update
next put in second card
install inf driver again when new hardware wizard comes up
then the driver update
then next card
then install inf then update driver

[hufnagel]

there's never a problem if only 2 boards are installed.
as soon as you stick in the 3rd, it 'Code 10's on you.

As far as I can tell, the difference between the two revisions is a couple of resistors sticking out of the tuner casing and a different sticker.

Other than that they both report exactly the same to the system when installed in virgin machines.

[kny3twalker]

does it matter which 2 boards?
can you do a mix of the two different boards with no problem?
is there any irq sharing going on?

[hufnagel]

doesn't matter which 2 boards. 2 will always work.
3 will always toss the 3rd.
there is no IRQ sharing going on between the boards. they all have unique IRQs *AND* INTs (that was a challenge)

[SHS]

Just wondering have try swapping new with old one using 2 tuner setup and dose it work?.
If yes then most likely the motherboard is the source of your problem.

[stanger89]

I know one member here reported it was impossible for him to get more than 2 tuners working until he replaced his VIA based board with an Intel. Intel and nForce chipsets seem to work far better than any VIA ones.

[fidget]

Originally posted by stanger89
I know one member here reported it was impossible for him to get more than 2 tuners working until he replaced his VIA based board with an Intel. Intel and nForce chipsets seem to work far better than any VIA ones.

That was me. I was using a Soyo Dragon lite (KT400, I believe) and two PVR-250s was the most I could use. When I added the third tuner, the other video recorded with the tuners turned to crap (lower 20% of the screen was noise and the upper 80% looked like it was recording at 320x200). I replaced the motherboard with an intel 865 based one from Gigabyte and am able to run all three of my PVR-250s together. I really prefer AMD, but until I can find a chipset that will support more than two tuners I will stay with what I have.

[hufnagel]

Welp...
It's almost 2am here. 5 hours of work on this and I'm now back where I was when I started. At least everything's working like it was originally.

I did discover that changing the primary video board out SOMETIMES causes the 3rd board to appear active in Device Mangler. Problem is, the K)*&^)* box won't let me install proper drivers for any other video board and all kinds of crazy arse errors pop up. Thinking it could be that all the other boards I tried were older than my current board so I'm going to pick up a nice new modern AGP video card tomorrow.

Thanks all.

[ToxMox]

Here is a little snippet from Hauppauge's site about this error:
Error Code 10: This device cannot start.

Try moving the WinTV card to a different PCI slot in the system. If there are any resource issues with the WinTV card and any other device in the system, this would reassign the resources for the WinTV.

Open the Control Panel - System - Advanced. In the Performance section click on the Settings button, then the Advanced tab. In the Memory Usage section located here, choose Programs instead of System Cache.

Make sure that the latest drivers for your VGA card are installed as well.

-------
is it always the same slot causing the problem?

I would also try getting the latest chipset drivers and also check if your motherboard has the latest bios. I would also try maybe a different video card and see if the problem goes away. You can also try in the bios to set Reset Configuration Data to enabled see if the IRQs get distributed properly. I would also disable any Com or Parallel ports in the bios that you aren't using.

Another thing I read that could may help is setting the bios to initialize PCI display first instead of AGP...may trick the resources into going correctly since you mentioned messing with your vga card.

Another thing to try that I read but could be risky and I recommend backing up the registry before trying this:
(paste)
Try this:

This is a fix for if you ever had a "data invalid" problem that nags you
while you were installing and swapping out cards with Windows XP.

This error appears to be due to a protection problem in the Windows registry
and can occur with a variety of drivers (sound cards and SCSI drivers have
been reported). To fix this problem, go to Start, Run... and type "regedit"
without the quotes to run the Registry Editor. Navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ENUM\PCI


and you will see a number of keys of the form "VEN_xxxx", where xxxx are
strings like "1102&DEV_0004&SUBSYS_00011103&REV_04".

Under each of these folders will be another folder with a long numerical
name.

Open each folder and look for the "DeviceDesc" which matches the hardware
you are trying to install/reinstall.

Right Click on the "VEN_xxxx" for that device and select 'Permissions' from
the toolbar, and then tick "Allow" for "Full Control" for everyone.

NOTE: ACTUALLY in the end I found that just applying the Permissions change
to the whole of the ENUM tree works as well - everything follows after that
anyway and inherits the permissions down the tree as such.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ENUM

Right Click on ENUM, and set permissions to Full Control for everyone

Close Regedit and then continue with the installation of your device.
---------------------------
If you have a spare drive laying around you could take out your boot drive and put in the temp drive and install XP and see if the problem still exists.

[gplasky]

Keep in mind also if you are using PCI Slot#1, thats shares IRQ with the AGP slot. Make sure you don't try to use the PCI Slot#1.

Gerry

[Crowdx42]

PCI Slot #1 depends on the board, on my Asus Micro Atx board slot 1 works perfectly fine with a card in it and also using agp slot. The motherboard manual should have a listing of which slots share which irqs. Something else you could try is disabling all unused hardware, eg. USB, Com ports, Parrallel ports, anything which is not being used. Once this is doen the best way to get these now unused resources to be used it a fresh windows install where XP will reassign the irqs.
Something else that might also help is while doing a fresh install, go into the BIOS and disable Plug and Play OS, then at the boot up blue screen, hit F5 and you will be asked for additional info on type of machine you are installing, select STANDARD COMPUTER. This will disable ACPI and virtual assignment of interrupts where XP shows a lot of hardware sharing the same irqs.
If you don't want a fresh install this can be also done within windows BUT sometimes does not work as good as when done during a clean install.
Patrick

[sudipto]

I have 4 x 250 cards in my Sage machine. One retail 250, one 250MCE (Amity), one 250OEM (Gateway) and one Roslyn Blackbird. Forgot the exact revisions on the boards, but I don't seem to remember seeing any B110.

My mobo is ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe. Working rock solid with no issues ... that I have found so far.

Have you checked in device manager to see if you have any IRQ conflicts ? Also, some BIOSes allow reassigning the IRQs to specific PCI slots (or manage them as groups) so that may be something worth trying.

[Myro]

I run 3 x PVR250 (all rev 16) on a micro-atx Gigabyte board (SIS chipset) wit a P4. Also have an AGP Card. All slots are full and I never had any problems.

Myro

[ckron]

Originally posted by gplasky
Keep in mind also if you are using PCI Slot#1, thats shares IRQ with the AGP slot. Make sure you don't try to use the PCI Slot#1.

Gerry

This is not true for all MB.

[mlbdude]

That is just generally true but generally for boards that have a full amount of PCI slots (unlike min-atx).

[gplasky]

I did not know that this wasn't true for mini-atx. Thanks for the info.

Gerry