Radeon 8500, kdetv, and xawtv broken - no video overlay device
I have a Radeon 8500 video card which I use as video-in for my computer
to act as my tv monitor. Sometime since the Summer, this has stopped
working and I am having no luck finding any helpful information by
searching. Most searches just refer to the old GATOS project, which
hasn't done anything for years, but supposedly has been rolled into
xorg's drivers.
Now, I know my card uses a "video overlay" which most tv-type programs
don't seem to care about. If I could get a /dev/video* setup with v4l
or something similar, I'd love to give that a try, but again, searches
don't flush out anything curent sounding.
I used to use GATOS's avview to open the AV-in window, but that stopped
working with X a year or so ago, at which point I went to the less
reliable but functional xawtv. That worked for a while by itself, but
then I needed to run kdetv first, and then xawtv (and then kdetv again
to shut off the audio). This was especially odd because kdetv didn't
actually ever get the actual video, but it would reliably get things
setup so xawtv could work. Xawtv still had problems, though: it would
just go blank if you resized it or made it full screen. The video would
come back if you brought up xawtv's menu, so the process became: start
kdetv, quit it, start xawtv, make it fullscreen, right click twice to
get the menu and get rid of it again, use the video, quit xawtv, start
kdetv, and finally quit it. What a mess! At least it worked, though.
Now, it seems as though my overlay device just isn't there. Kdetv says
there's no video device at all and xawtv reports "no usable video port
found".
I've looked through the xorg log, and there doesn't seem to be any kind
of error to follow up on. I haven't made any config changes since back
when it was working. All that's changed is there have been updates
installed (debian testing), but I didn't use the video-in for several
months, so I have no idea what batch of updates broke things.
So, my questions:
- Can I get a /dev/video* for the Radeon 8500 (R200) video input? How?
- Can I get directions to the best place to ask this question and get
help, if there are no answers here?
- Are there any newer or more reliable programs I could use besides
kdetv and xawtv that will work with the 8500's video overlay thing?
- What happened? How should I have found out?
- Anything else I can do, besides buying new hardware (not currently an
option)
References:
- results of "xawtv -v -2"
http://concordantthought.com/personal/robert/relay/xawtv-v-2.20110101.log
- Xorg log
http://concordantthought.com/personal/robert/relay/Xorg.0.20110101.log
Thanks for any help,
Robert
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