From pxc@lists.prosa.it  Mon Apr 16 22:12:43 2001
From: pxc@lists.prosa.it (Jeff McKinstry)
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 14:12:43 -0700
Subject: [Pxc] I had the same trouble as Tye Brady.  Any solution?
Message-ID: <3ADB604B.7F412D91@nsi.edu>

Hi,
    I had exactly the same trouble as Tye Brady.  Do you have a
solution?  By the way, I'm running on a Pentium 4 processor.

Here is the info you requested from Tye.  It hangs during the insmod
pxc.o command.  Here is what gets printed:
found PXC200L: mem = 0xe5bff000, irq=11:



Thanks,

Jeff McKinstry
The Neurosciences Institute,
La Jolla, California




From pxc@lists.prosa.it  Thu Apr 19 16:44:11 2001
From: pxc@lists.prosa.it (Tye Brady)
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 11:44:11 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [Pxc] I had the same trouble as Tye Brady.  Any solution?
In-Reply-To: <3ADB604B.7F412D91@nsi.edu> from Jeff McKinstry at "Apr 16, 2001 02:12:43 pm"
Message-ID: <200104191544.LAA28109@benz.mit.edu>

Hi Jeff,

First let me thank Alessandro for writing the device driver and the prompt
response to my question.  It really helped me out (BTW his book is awesome
on writing device drivers).

OK the solution for me was to pitch the "prebuilt" kernel for me that
came with RH7.0.  Whatever was happening, it was incompatible with
this kernel "they" (ie. RH with the 7.0 dist) built on my machine
was not working very well with ANY loadable modules.

What I did then was download 2.2.18 source and recompile the kernel myself
so that I could know exactly what it was I was running.
This sounded easy enough but for a newbie like myself, I tripped multiple
times on the job.  The hardest trip BY FAR was the fact that the compiler
that comes with RH7.0 has a major flaw in it that does NOT allow you to
compile kernels!  The solution is to use KGCC and not GCC that comes with the
distribution.  After that was cleared up, I was able to compile the kernel
and *without a hitch* run the PXC drivers.  Works great.  If you need help,
I can point you to many references.

I also use bttv0.7.59 with i2c-2.5.5 to run XAWTV and bttvgrab quite nicely.
I believe they incorporated Alessandros drivers and work.  Just for reference
for you lab types that might be interested, I am also running a GPIB board
inside the linux box and doing data collection simultaneously.  It is all
playing nicely.

My personal application is a machine vision like task of trying to measure
the drift of a star in a CCD camera.  I would like to locate the object
in the camera, stay locked on to it, and then measure how much it moves
in a certain amount of time.  If anybody has any references to any code
or solutions, that would be GREAT!

HTH,
Tye



> Hi,
>     I had exactly the same trouble as Tye Brady.  Do you have a
> solution?  By the way, I'm running on a Pentium 4 processor.
> 
> Here is the info you requested from Tye.  It hangs during the insmod
> pxc.o command.  Here is what gets printed:
> found PXC200L: mem = 0xe5bff000, irq=11:
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Jeff McKinstry
> The Neurosciences Institute,
> La Jolla, California
> 
> 
> 
> __
> Pxc mailing list at Pxc@lists.prosa.it
> Send help as subject to pxc-request@lists.prosa.it for help
> Archives at http://lists.prosa.it/pipermail/pxc
> 



From pxc@lists.prosa.it  Thu Apr 19 17:12:05 2001
From: pxc@lists.prosa.it (Alessandro Rubini)
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 18:12:05 +0200
Subject: [Pxc] I had the same trouble as Tye Brady. Any solution?
In-Reply-To: <200104191544.LAA28109@benz.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <20010419181205.A1811@morgana.systemy.it>

> First let me thank Alessandro for writing the device driver and the prompt
> response to my question.  It really helped me out (BTW his book is awesome
> on writing device drivers).

I'm not a native speaker, I can't understand if this is ironic or thankful :)

I don't think I managed to fix your problem, from my traces it looks like
I asked you to take some steps and send me result, and it all ended there.
 
> OK the solution for me was to pitch the "prebuilt" kernel for me that
> came with RH7.0.  Whatever was happening, it was incompatible [...]

Well, this is really good information. While I always suggest to take
a clean Linus kernel, I didn't know RH7.0 was so different in this
respect.  I fear I must try it out.

> This sounded easy enough but for a newbie like myself, I tripped multiple
> times on the job.

You can refer to http://www.linux.it/kerneldocs/kconf/ (ok, that's not
widely advertised, but I don't even know if it is really useful or not :).

Anyway, I'll put a big warning on the new version of the driver, due
out 2.5 weeks from now (this time I'm under contract by ImageNation to
add some features, so I'm bound to meet the deadline.

> I also use bttv0.7.59 with i2c-2.5.5 to run XAWTV and bttvgrab quite nicely.
> I believe they incorporated Alessandros drivers and work.

They only grabbed initialization code. Bttv is a completely different
code-base, it was not stable or commented enough to be a viable
approach when I had the need to support PXC200 in my software.

Now I'm able to run video4linux too (after a *huge* amount of hours to
make it work), so the next version of my driver will include
video4linux support, and I'll possibly contribute code to support the
PXC200-F in bttv (if I have time).

> My personal application is a machine vision like task of trying to measure
> the drift of a star in a CCD camera.  I would like to locate the object
> in the camera, stay locked on to it, and then measure how much it moves
> in a certain amount of time.  If anybody has any references to any code
> or solutions, that would be GREAT!

My "bisce" tracking program does almost the same. It is quite
"primitive" in design, but it works satisfactorily for the physiology
lab that uses it (I even send two computers abroad with "bisce"
preinstalled). Its docuemntation is at
http://gnu.systemy.it/software/bisce/ , download info at 
http://gnu.systemy.it/software#bisce

/alessandro


