I picked this card up from frys for $40, but if i'd known it was going to be this much of a pain i would have stuck with my bt848. I've been looking into this for about a week and here's what i've learned:
Support for the card has been included in the standard linux kernel as of around 2.6.13. If you use 2.6.13, it is card #57. Unfortunately, most of the stock kernels included with debian, redhat, etc, are not quite this new so you have to compile it yourself. But no patches should be required.
If you are new to linux, this means you should download the latest stable release of 2.6.13 from
www.kernel.org (as of September 10, 2005), unpack it in your /usr/src/ directory and follow the instructions on the install file. I would strongly recommend reading up on the act of compiling kernels however. Also, if you run Debian or anything based on Debian (i.e. Ubuntu, Libranet, Knoppix, and a few others) it's not quite as simple as that, and you should read debian's instructions for building kernels. (
http://www.debian.org ). If by the time you read this your stock kernel is 2.6.13 or higher, you shouldn't need to compile the kernel.
Once you are running 2.6.13 and have tvtime or xawtv installed, try the following command as root:
# modprobe saa7134 card=57 radio=1 remote=1
Note that the card number here is for the current release of 2.6.13. You should check the documentation for the kernel to make sure the card number is correct. It does change. Once the module is loaded you should be able to see something when you run tvtime. tvtime is the easiest, imho, but if you know what you're doing with xawtv, it's not so bad. If you do get a picture, then you move onto the next step. If it didn't work, check the card number and try again. But don't just re-run modprobe. You have to unload the driver first, i think. so type
# rmmod saa7134
You could mess around with other card/tuner combinations just to see what works. Just remember to unload the driver each time. Rebooting is not necessary, and at this stage would undo the modprobe operation.
As root, open up /etc/modules (in debian) and add the line
saa7131 card=57 radio=1 remote=1
Note that this is the same as before but without the modprobe command. These arguments are passed to modprobe automagically during startup. That's all that's going on here. This file just contains a list of modules for modprobe to load. So the line should match whatever you passed to modprobe to get the card to work.
Also keep in mind, if you have to rebuild your kernel, you must also rebuild any other third-party modules you have installed, like your nvidia drivers, or ati drivers, or wifi network card drivers if you had to build those externally. Since they are compiled against a particular kernel version and configuration you can't just use your old ones. It sucks, i know, but that's the way it is. For debian this can be particularly easy if your apt-setup is configured properly....just use module-assistant.
# apt-get install module-assistant
# m-a auto-install {whatever package}
But really read the module-assistant man page or ask somone to make sure you get it right.
Radio & TV card problems - AverTv GO 007
)
