HELP! Big problem, Can't install my card anymore Rating Options

[Guest_Simon_*]

I'm from Italy and I bought my visionplus dtv dvb-t PCI card some months ago, set it up and had it running perfectly.
Now, some days ago, after trying some 3rd party programs like mytheatre, progdvb and similar I got the window message asking me to install drivers for my card. I did that manually and then when I started VisionPlus DTV I immediately get a message saying "device or drivers not supported, please check".
I tried everything from uninstalling any software and hardware and reinstall everything, i even re-formatted 3 times and still i can't get my card to work.

I try to install drivers from the cd setup but when installation is proceeding i don't see any windows notification telling me that the device drivers have been installed (and infact they aren't). If I try to install the card manually by telling windows the drivers directory, windows won't find them.

I don't know what do to now, i'm desperate.
As I said before, my card worked perfectly before. I have to add that when I first installed it, my other pci cards were set in different slots than now and i don't remember their order (could be important?) and after some months I had to swap them for some reasons but my VisionDTV continued working.

What happened? Is my card spoiled?
Please help me.

Bye
Simon

P.S: I have to specify my system configuration:

Pentium2 400Mhz
320Mb RAM
Riva TNT
ADSL pci modem
Sound Blaster Live!
VisionDtv PCI Ter

Windows XP Professional

[Guest_bionicdonkey_*]

Are there any notifications in device manager? and also have you tried installing the bda drivers?

[Guest_Simon_*]

In device manager I see video multimedia controller and multimedia controller with a yellow "!". If I see their properties I can read that the device is not installed properly.

I didn't try the bda drivers, where can i find them and how do they work?

Thanks, bye

[Guest_bionicdonkey_*]

Simon,

Can you open the device properties again and select the 'Resources' tab and tell us if there are any conflicts listed in the textbox at the bottom please.

The bda drivers can be found at http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~spectrum/index.html and also in the Technical & Development Forum.
Probably the best way to install them would be to right click on the twinhan drivers and click 'Uninstall'. Then right click on something else and select 'Scan for hardware changes'. It should find the devices again and when the wizard comes up to install the drivers, do i manually and select the location of the extracted drivers.

[Guest_Simon_*]

Thanks for the BDA drivers suggestion but maybe I have found what gives me that problem.

Editing the Windows registry I see my VisionPlus card has an erroneous Subsystem id:

VEN_109E&DEV_036E&SUBSYS_FFFF18FF&REV_11
VEN_109E&DEV_0878&SUBSYS_FFFF18FF&REV_11

..................................It is the code after &SUBSYS_


Instead of being the one listed in the DTV.inf file:

VEN_109E&DEV_036E&SUBSYS_00011822
VEN_109E&DEV_0878&SUBSYS_00011822


I have read from this microsoft site ( site) that :

"The operating system inherently relies on the IDs of devices. A change in any of the IDs of a device between boots or sleep/resume cycles can have devastating effects. A change in an SID when resuming from sleep would, at a minimum, trigger a Plug and Play event. The operating system would detect the new device ID and install a new instance of the device; a best-case example would be that the same driver is loaded for this instance. However, if the device had a custom driver or exceptions had been applied, adverse effects would occur; a worst-case example would be if the SID of the primary video controller changed during a resume, causing a surprise removal of the device that has a driver loaded. A race condition would result between the loaded driver being unloaded and the new driver being loaded, which would cause the system to hang.

Note: The INF file parsing code for Windows 95 (original and OEM Service Releases) will stop searching INF files once a match is found. If the DID&VID entry in an INF file is found before the DID&VID&SID&SVID entry is found, only the driver associated with the DID&VID entry will be loaded."

Can u please control your VisionPlus card subsystem ID by executing regedit and finding the key under :
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\VEN_109E....

If my thought are correct there should be a way for restoring the original ids... or should i contact my reseller?

Please help me, this is driving me crazy.
Some help from expert users is very appreciated.

Thanks a lot
Bye
Simon

[DrP]

I've seen the problem of wrong IDs etc. All you can do is delete the keys with regedit. Also look for variations on 109e. Make sure that any keys you do delete actually refer to the VP. After you've deleted them, shutdown the PC and reseat the card or better yet, move it to a difference PCI slot. Thats what I ended up doing when I had a similar problem.

If the card still has the wrong ID, you could edit the .inf files to match the info Windows says its getting from the card.

[Guest_Simon_*]

Thanks you very much DrP for your reply but i did change my card slot a hundred times and still i got this problem I even reformatted 4 times. The weird thing is that the card worked perfectly before and the first time I did install it in a minute.
The 109E id is correct, it's the subsystem id that is wrong. I tried changing it in the .inf file, the drivers are now found and installed correctly but visiondtv won't start saying "card or driver not supported, please check".

I wanted to know if this is a visiondtv card problem (is it the card which declares a wrong id?) or a Windows problem (is it windows which detects a wrong id?) so that maybe i can send back the card to assistance.

I wrote also to Twinhan support, hoping to hear some help soon.
Thanks a lot.
Bye
Simon

[Guest_rumpole_*]

This is wierd stuff Dr P.

Would changing to the BDA dirvers fix this guys problems ?

Or is this some unique issue with VP cards ? Must be hair-tearing to have this going on.

[Guest_Simon_*]

Hey guys, after surfing the web all night I finally figured out what's my problem:
The EEPROM of my card got corrupted.
I understood this after having found a similar discussion HERE .

Probably I installed some 3rd party program, which I cannot remember, that ruined my card eeprom.
After having found this other post HERE
I tried that eeprom reader/writer program and this is a picture of a memory dump of my VisionPlus dvb-t card:


You can see that the eeprom got corrupted.
Now all I need is your help because If you send me an image of your VisionPlus DVB-T PCI card memory dump I can restore all original values.
All you need to do is to is download this very little program HERE extract the zip file and run the e2prom from MS-DOS prompt and then send me an image of what's the result to my email address simodag@libero.it or on this board.
Only do this if you have a VisionPlus DTV dvb-T PCI card.

Please help me cause I don't want to loose my card or send it away to assistance, i'd never see it back.

I hope someone of you can help me.
Thank you so much.
Simon

[Guest_JoeyBloggs_*]

I would like to see the source code for this little utility before I run an unknown binary on my system

[Guest_Simon_*]

I would like to see the source code for this little utility before I run an unknown binary on my system 

I knew people would have been afraid of doing that...
Anyway that utility, that I found in THIS POST, is a simple Bt8x8 EEPROM Dumper/Writer and does not harm anything unless you set some parameters after the command e2prom.

If you just type "e2prom" from the command line without any parameters, as I did in that image above, you'll see the dump of your card memory and nothing is modified.

Please it's very important for me, anyone with my same card can help?

Bye
Simon

[Lindsay]

Why don't you try TwinHAM! They should be able to help you.


Lindsay

[Guest_Simon_*]

I wrote them yesterday and I'm waiting for answers.
Anyway I thought some of you could help... never mind.

Bye
Simon

[bear]

Simon,

- Dumping EEPROM contents:

   00:  05 00 00 00 00 00 FB FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   10:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   20:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   30:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   40:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   50:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   60:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   70:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   80:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   90:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   A0:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   B0:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   C0:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   D0:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   E0:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
   F0:  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF 00 01 18 22

Done

For the benifit of those who ends up in your situation.
dan.

EDIT: I have used the dump program, and while it seems ok its best not to use it unless you are desperate.

[Guest_rumpole_*]

Hey Simon

Let us know if you are able to fix this issue. I've still got a vague feeling that the application specific chip on the board was designed and programmed by TwinHan and the programming is probably of the same standard as their drivers.

Maybe this utility will allow us to look inside the code for this chip and see if there is any room for improvement.

EDIT: sorry, getting overexcited - I see this facility is to look at the eeprom data for the bt878

[Guest_Simon_*]

Hey bear, I have to thank you SOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!!

I did fix it, could install drivers and VisionDTV worked fine, I just tested it for some minutes and it seems ok even if I had some difficulties in receiving a channel that I could see before (but maybe this depends on the broadcaster).

For everyone having this problem I suggest this solution. I'm also sure that all those people having the TER card detected as SAT maybe could have a look at their EEPROM and find something mistaken...

Anyway tomorrow I'll check if everything else is ok.

Thank you VERY VERY MUCH bear, you saved me
Can I offer you a drink?

Finally a happy ending!
Bye
Simon

[DrP]

I'm supprised that the eeprom can even be write enabled. Its not like its something that has to be updated once the card ships from the factory. Simple case of tieing a pin to ground normally (not sure with the serial eeprom they use, don't know the chip number).

[bear]

drp,

I'm supprised that the eeprom can even be write enabled. Its not like its something that has to be updated once the card ships from the factory.

I can't understand this either unless they allow for different regions to have different drivers etc after the factory. Maybe thats why there sometimes dead from the box, the eeprom gets written to on the first install. Don't know, I found a pdf on the fusion bt878 eeprom.

http://www.conexant.com/servlets/DownloadS....pdf?FileId=541

Dan.

[Guest_rumpole_*]

Having the eeprom addressable (and writable) from the i2c bus makes it pretty susceptible. Hmmm.. something to watch I guess.

Edited.

[Guest_JoeyBloggs_*]

I'm supprised that the eeprom can even be write enabled.  Its not like its something that has to be updated once the card ships from the factory.  Simple case of tieing a pin to ground normally (not sure with the serial eeprom they use, don't know the chip number).

Simon glad it's all worked out for you And kudo's to Bear for being brave

Ok I got curious and pulled a card out. It's a Amtel 24C02N just like the Bt878 application notes suggest.