Problems getting PCTV 292E working

[Geoff Shang]

Hi,

Thought I'd post here as I know a number of you have played with DVB 
devices.

I'm currently in Scotland.  I bought a PCTV Tripplestick 292E 
(http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/PCTV_Systems_tripleStick_T2_(292e)) 
to watch local free-to-air TV (aka Freeview).

I'm running Debian Jessie on a Linux VM running under VMWare Fusion 7 (yes 
I know 8 is out now) on a late-2011 Macbook Pro.  I'm using the stock 
Jessie kernel.

Linux portkey 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u3 
(2015-08-04) x86_64 GNU/Linux

I plugged the 292E in and told VMWare to connect it to the Linux VM. 
Linux recognised the device right away and set up the DVB devices.

I downloaded the 292E firmware files from 
http://palosaari.fi/linux/v4l-dvb/firmware/Si2168/ and copied them to 
/lib/firmware/

$ ls -lh /lib/firmware/
total 60K
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.7K Sep 20 01:03 dvb-demod-si2168-02.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  28K Sep 20 01:03 dvb-demod-si2168-a20-01.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  18K Sep 20 01:03 dvb-demod-si2168-a30-01.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6.8K Sep 20 01:03 dvb-demod-si2168-b40-01.fw

I invoke w_scan as follows:

# w_scan -f t -c GB -F -t 3

w_scan fails to find any channels and errors get printed to syslog.

Sep 20 18:19:28 portkey kernel: [64658.040700] si2168 1-0064: si2168: 
found a 'Silicon Labs Si2168' in cold state
Sep 20 18:19:28 portkey kernel: [64658.040750] si2168 1-0064: firmware: 
direct-loading firmware dvb-demod-si2168-02.fw
Sep 20 18:19:28 portkey kernel: [64658.040755] si2168 1-0064: si2168: 
downloading firmware from file 'dvb-demod-si2168-02.fw'
Sep 20 18:19:29 portkey kernel: [64659.745971] si2168 1-0064: si2168: 
found a 'Silicon Labs Si2168' in warm state
Sep 20 18:19:29 portkey kernel: [64659.767509] si2168 1-0064: si2168: 
found a 'Silicon Labs Si2168' in cold state
Sep 20 18:19:29 portkey kernel: [64659.767540] si2168 1-0064: firmware: 
direct-loading firmware dvb-demod-si2168-02.fw
Sep 20 18:19:29 portkey kernel: [64659.767543] si2168 1-0064: si2168: 
downloading firmware from file 'dvb-demod-si2168-02.fw'
Sep 20 18:19:31 portkey kernel: [64661.469856] si2168 1-0064: si2168: 
found a 'Silicon Labs Si2168' in warm state
Sep 20 18:20:10 portkey kernel: [64700.562720] em28178 #0: write to i2c 
device at 0xc8 failed with unknown error (status=3)
Sep 20 18:20:10 portkey kernel: [64700.562732] si2168 1-0064: si2168: i2c 
write failed=-5
Sep 20 18:20:12 portkey kernel: [64702.071617] em28178 #0: write to i2c 
device at 0xc8 failed with unknown error (status=6)
Sep 20 18:20:44 portkey kernel: [64734.972373] em28178 #0: write to i2c 
device at 0xc8 failed with unknown error (status=6)
Sep 20 18:22:59 portkey mpt-statusd: detected non-optimal RAID status
Sep 20 18:23:47 portkey kernel: [64917.750325] em28178 #0: write to i2c 
device at 0xc8 failed with unknown error (status=6)
Sep 20 18:24:27 portkey kernel: [64957.405047] em28178 #0: write to i2c 
device at 0xc8 failed with unknown error (status=3)
Sep 20 18:24:27 portkey kernel: [64957.405059] si2168 1-0064: si2168: i2c 
write failed=-5
Sep 20 18:24:55 portkey kernel: [64985.700415] em28178 #0: write to i2c 
device at 0xc8 failed with unknown error (status=3)
Sep 20 18:24:55 portkey kernel: [64985.700424] si2168 1-0064: si2168: i2c 
write failed=-5

I did some earches for the i2c errors but found mostly code references and 
little that's relevant.

I do note that it doesn't appear to have loaded firmware from either the 
a20, a30 or b40 firmware files.  Not sure how to make this happen.

I will keep digging but I thought maybe someone here might have some 
whisdom.

Thanks,
Geoff.