best LiveCD distro with stk1160 easycap

Support and queries relating to third party Live CDs and DVD, VM images and other packaged distributions
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robertbruce
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2012 4:57 am

best LiveCD distro with stk1160 easycap

Post by robertbruce »

hi folks,
i am looking for the best liveCD distro with the stk1160 driver already implemented.

It is for an old dell inspiration 600 with a replacement power-supply (.15 volts less than than the oem). Unfortunately the PC limits the amount of power going to the usb ports. The power limitation seems to affect which driver linux loads for the usb ports, ie it downgrades ehci to uhci. I've been booting the bios, onto the Fn key and into the case physically disconnecting the modem, wifi, firewire and battery. I've gone as far as removing one ram chip. 2G is enough.

The pc will boot from a usb with the easycap and usb drive plugged in, but it is very slow, like, 1.3mb floppy-disk boot slow. Plugging the easycap in later seizes the machine. Easycap doesnt like port-hubs, a powered hub was an option. The device (usb drive or easycap device) registers under lsusb, but busts the driver to uhci, not fast enough.

My solution was to use a live cd and remaster it. Using the cd leaves enough power to run the usb's capture devices using the ehci driver. I tried puppy 5.1.1, ZMLarch2, bluechery and awd live disks. I blundered around tring to break the kernels upto to 2.6.30 (i think that's it) with varing degrees of failure either running out of ram/disk space and inability to keep up with pet, aur, debs, pacman, su, sudo, make, builds, depmod.

This morning im back over to the zmlarch disk because yesterday i came across AUR which at first guess it is like a pet...after i dont understand enough for that not to work ill going over for some fresh puppy for a look.
I've concentrated on these old disks because i know they work better than my knowledge...and from experience i know the fresher distro wont run as fast.

i;v had great success in the past with doing cli server installs to usb drives, from scratch, using ubuntu 10 & 12 and zm 1.24 & .25 so i know my skill is there...
...many thanks for any help
Satellite L20, 8G flash 512-2G Ram
Ubuntu Server 10.04 32 bit
ZM 1.24 Running 2 USB cams at 16FPS

Intel P4, 40G IDE, 1G Ram
Ubuntu Server 12.04 64 bit
ZM 1.25 Running 6 USB cams at 10FPS & 1 Sony IR CCTV Cam 420lines at 10FPS
robertbruce
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2012 4:57 am

Re: best LiveCD distro with stk1160 easycap

Post by robertbruce »

i was hoping to get zmlarch running stk1160 but after throwing another afternoon at pacman and reading the current arch and larch instals i've fried my brain and going to play with some puppies. Ill come back to arch later, im keen to put it up against the ubuntu server install i have, see which runs zm the fastest and bestest...
Satellite L20, 8G flash 512-2G Ram
Ubuntu Server 10.04 32 bit
ZM 1.24 Running 2 USB cams at 16FPS

Intel P4, 40G IDE, 1G Ram
Ubuntu Server 12.04 64 bit
ZM 1.25 Running 6 USB cams at 10FPS & 1 Sony IR CCTV Cam 420lines at 10FPS
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