Passthrough Bt878 Video Capture card

[johngc]

Hello. After years of running a home server on Ubuntu and messing around with various programs I stumbled across unRAID, took the plunge and am loving it.

 

My only sticking point so far is getting Zoneminder to work. I previously had it running on an Ubuntu box with video feeds coming in via two Bt878 PCI cards (cheap eBay jobs that have worked for years...). I have tried installing the Docker and whilst it runs, the cards do not appear to be available. A bit more reading led me to the conclusion that the unRAID kernel does not support the cards any doesn't look like it will (I think I understood that right from a few forum posts).

 

The next step is a VM. I can get Ubuntu up and running but am now trying to get the cards to passthrough without much luck. I think that it may be my setup at fault now though.

 

I have a ASUSTeK M3N78-VM board with a AMD Phenom II X4 945 cpu which I think you are probably going to say to me doesn't support IOMMU so is a no go....

 

Am I right in thinking that I can't get any PCI card to passthrough if my system is not IOMMU capable or is it just GPUs?

 

If thats the case then I guess its back to the drawing board with ZM and time for some cheap IP cameras from eBay...

[METDeath]

The 780 chipset is a no go.

 

An 890FX or 990FX would give you the best choices.

 

However, the CPU still needs to support IOMMU (AMD-Vi) and I'm not sure if they do or not. Sadly, AMD's website isn't nearly as helpful as the Intel ARK site.

 

I think the Phenom line supports AMD-Vi so you should be good with just a new motherboard, I had excellent luck with a ASUS 990FX board and unRAID. Granted, I was using an FX 6300 six core CPU

[johngc]

Thanks METDeath.

 

I have done a bit of googlefu and 'think' that the CPU is capable. Before I do take the plunge on a new motherboard, does any one know for sure?

 

As you said , the AMD website isn't great and the Wikipedia page seems to suggest it is as do a few AMD forums.

 

The way I see it, a new MB will cost the same as a couple of cheap IP cameras anyway (and be more expandable for the future  )