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View Full Version : Odd TV tuner blues...


Damion Chaplin
08-05-2005, 08:48 PM
So, I recently gave up on my HTPC as a TV box and instead rented an HDTV DVR from my cable company (better resolution and the wife likes it better). When they make an HD MCE machine (or card) I will re-address the issue...
Anyway, so I took the Hauppage PVR250 out of my HTPC and put it in my main machine, so I could still record TV as MPEGs and transfer them to my Archos.
But when I inserted it into my big machine, it didn't work. Oh well, I bought it used on eBay so I figured it must have finally given up the ghost. So I bought a TV Wonder Elite. I took it home and plugged it in, and guess what? That's right, it didn't work either. :roll: Oh well, the Elite is supposed to be a better card, so I'll keep it.
But here's the problem: That card won't work in any of the PCI slots on my mobo. Neither will the PVR250. Windows does not even see that I've added new hardware.
The thing is, my USB card DOES work in any of my PCI slots.

Has anyone ever heard of the PCI slots only partially working? Only working with some cards and not others? At this point, I'm pretty sure that if I stuck the Hauppage card back in my HTPC it would work. And the TVW Elite is brand new. At this point, I think I should start looking into a new mobo, but I wanted to see if you guys concur or if you think there's something I'm missing or should check first. Any thoughts on the subject would be most helpful...

Jason Dunn
08-05-2005, 09:15 PM
Hrm. Very odd. Two PCI cards, neither works in any of the PCI slots? I'd suspect a bad mobo indeed - do you have any other PCI cards in any of the other slots? i.e.: can you test whether the slots are bad with a PCI card that isn't a TV tuner card?

Damion Chaplin
08-05-2005, 09:22 PM
Hrm. Very odd. Two PCI cards, neither works in any of the PCI slots? I'd suspect a bad mobo indeed - do you have any other PCI cards in any of the other slots? i.e.: can you test whether the slots are bad with a PCI card that isn't a TV tuner card?

Yeah, my USB card does work. I thought maybe the other PCI slots were dead, so I pulled my USB card and stuck the tuner in that slot. No effect. I plugged the USB card into one of the other slots and it worked as normal...

So all slots appear to work with the USB card and none of them want to work for the tuner card(s).

Damion Chaplin
08-08-2005, 08:53 PM
UPDATE: Well, over the weekend, I was able to verify that the 2 TV tuner cards to in fact work (I plugged them back into the HTPC just to check). And now, this morning, it appears as though the USB card that apparently worked appartently doesn't work very well. I can copy about 200MB and then it stalls out.

Guess it's time for a new mobo. :cry:

Don Tolson
08-09-2005, 08:57 PM
It certainly looks like you've taken the steps to isolate the problem. The only other test I might suggest is, if you have access to another mobo (motherboard?) -- i.e. someone else's computer -- you plug them in there and confirm that they work fine.

Damion Chaplin
08-09-2005, 09:07 PM
Yeah, I've verified that the cards work. I've never heard of the PCI ports going out, but I guess I have now... The scary thing is I used this same motherboard to build two other systems for friends of mine. Hope theirs don't go out too... Sheesh, I bought them that board because I'd never had any problems with mine. :oops:

Anyone interested in a mobo with dead PCI slots? :wink: