Problem with various bt878A cards

[Istvan]

Hi All,
I've got last week three different BT878A based CCTV cards, and decided to build a dvr, but I can't get them worked.

the cards:
Geovision GV650 (I've found card=157,158 parameter)
Geovision GV250v2
and a noname (auto detected card=105)
The 2 geovision cards are auto detected generic card=0

What I've already tried:
Firstly I was trying to get work the cards googling keywords bttv, linux, "Card's_name", PCI VEN identifier (eg: 109e:036e), and tried to
modprobe bttv card=x with random card IDs I've found. But without success.
Then i wrote a shell-script incrementing value of i 1 to 167, removes bttv related modules, inserts bttv module with card=$i parameter and grabs an image with fswebcam from Composite0 input. The images are created, but all black with a timestamp at the bottom.

The cards were working before. I'm trying as root, so I have right for the /dev/video* devices

Should I apply any other bttv parameter(s) (for example type=x) to get these cards working?
What other data should I supply for anybody could help me?
Has anybody experience with any of these cards on linux?
Is there any other way to find how can I make them working?

Thanks a lot
Istvan

[Gary S]

What version of Linux are you using? There are reports of issued with newer versions of Linux and the bt878. This thread mentions it.
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=23767

With the older versions of Linux I've used, no setup is required if the card is in the machine when Linux is installed. Linux automatically loaded the bt878 module and created the necessary dev/video setup for the card.