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(Solved)Case of the curious serial port ...irblaster again!
http://forums.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=22267		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  grg3 [ Thu Oct 06, 2011 6:32 am ]
Post subject:  (Solved)Case of the curious serial port ...irblaster again!
My current working mythbackend died recently and was replaced by another machine that I had on hand that does not have a serial port. This necessitated changing channels on the satellite receiver with the satellite remote instead of the irblaster I have been using.

I decided to upgrade to a new 1155 celeron (more guts, less power consumption). The motherboard I selected has an internal serial port connector like most of the newer board have now. This is my first experience with this type of setup instead of conventional port on the back.

What I found is that the header actually provides two ports (com1 and com2) but there is no way predicting which will be reported as active and it is usually not the one set in systemconfig! Even when it looks like it is detected correctly and appears to be working there are no change changes. I am back to where I was before new system.

Has anyone had experience with this type of setup? Am I in for another new motherboard? All help is appreciated. :(
Author:  smartel [ Thu Oct 06, 2011 6:14 pm ]
Post subject: 
Can you share what is the motherboard manufacturer and model . I am suprised to hear that it has two serial ports. The BIOS should let you select the I/O adress, and IRQ, don't let it to the default AUTO.
Author:  mattbatt [ Thu Oct 06, 2011 10:05 pm ]
Post subject: 
Not that I want you to spend more money but there is the USB version of the IRblaster.
Author:  grg3 [ Fri Oct 07, 2011 6:13 am ]
Post subject: 
Well, everything comes in three. First machine dies, new machine serial port does not work, now the HDPVR refuses to record. I think there is a message in all of this. Either I am going back to SD manual recording or I am giving up for now.

The motherboard I have is a Foxconn H61MX. It appears to have an io chipset that provides ps2, serial, lpt, etc. The motherboard calls the port com2 but it appears to be switching back and forth between Com1 and Com2.

I found a post on the net about arch linux not recognizing serial ports and the solution was to pass pnpacpi=off via grub. The upshot was that irq was not assigned properly and it appears when I look at lsdev that this may be what is happening. I tried the above and was not able to use it because it killed the keyboard and network. I think I may have to wait for a newer kernel (Linhes 7) to see if that helps.

It is disappointing that serial port is such a pain, because I think that the sandy bridge celeron (G530) would make a great htpc.

I all my many years of running Knoppmyth and LinHES, I have found that changing the channel on the settop box to be the biggest pain. This is particularly true of blasting. The best setup I ever had was a direct serial connection to a motorola cable box. Of course, that was pre-HD days, too.

Still, when all the hardware was behaving, the last two years of HD recording have been a thing of beauty! Thanks to everyone for all their help. If I figure out the serial port issue, I will report back here. I will be interested to hear other folks solutions as well.
Author:  mattbatt [ Fri Oct 07, 2011 7:34 pm ]
Post subject: 
A non-free way to fix this is to get the usb ir blaster.
Author:  slowtolearn [ Sat Oct 08, 2011 7:53 am ]
Post subject: 
grg3 wrote:
The motherboard I have is a Foxconn H61MX. It appears to have an io chipset that provides ps2, serial, lpt, etc. The motherboard calls the port com2 but it appears to be switching back and forth between Com1 and Com2.
According to the manual I downloaded the onboard header near the DIMM slots is COM2, COM1 is an optional 9-pin serial connector above the optional HDMI port.

Have you tried disabling COM1 in the BIOS? Is that even an option?
Author:  tjc [ Sat Oct 08, 2011 8:50 am ]
Post subject: 
Sounds like a udev instability. You may need to fix the rules for that.
Author:  grg3 [ Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:30 am ]
Post subject: 
I am going to try a test install of 7 on a spare hard drive. Maybe I'll be lucky and everything will work.
Author:  grg3 [ Fri Oct 14, 2011 9:03 am ]
Post subject: 
Well, a new install of 7.00 (testing) works and most importantly the hdpvr works (hooray). No further progress on the serial port. Back to manual channel changes.
Author:  grg3 [ Mon Oct 24, 2011 11:33 am ]
Post subject: 
OK! No hope on the serial port front.

I was revisiting the MythTV Wiki remotes page and I find that blasting is now supported for all mce transceivers. I have a version 1 transceiver and it was not previously supported.

I tried to enable mecusb as the transmitter in System Menu/Remotes, but it still does not want to work.

I was successful in changing the channel with the following command:

Code:
irsend SET_TRANSMITTERS 2
         irsend SEND_ONCE dct2000 7


No channel change with the remote. Any ideas? I think I need to do a bug report on this.
Author:  grg3 [ Wed Oct 26, 2011 3:45 pm ]
Post subject: 
Good news! IF you have a mceusb remote/transmitter, you don't need a serial port or a serial blaster! Yeah! :D
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