I have a problem with my Philips ToUcam Pro (Philips 740 webcam,
using
the pwc module) on both FC4 and a Fedora development system. When I try
to start camorama, it says:
Could not connect to video device (/dev/video1).
Please check connection.
and aborts.
dmesg says right after boot:
pwc Philips webcam module version 9.0.2-unofficial loaded.
pwc Supports Philips PCA645/646, PCVC675/680/690,
PCVC720[40]/730/740/750 & PCVC830/840.
pwc Also supports the Askey VC010, various Logitech Quickcams, Samsung
MPC-C10 and MPC-C30,
pwc the Creative WebCam 5 & Pro Ex, SOTEC Afina Eye and Visionite
VCS-UC300 and VCS-UM100.
pwc Default framerate set to 30.
pwc Philips PCVC740K (ToUCam Pro)/PCVC840 (ToUCam II) USB webcam
detected.
pwc Registered as /dev/video1.
usbcore: registered new driver Philips webcam
After trying to start camorama, dmesg says:
pwc Failed to set LED on/off time.
pwc type = 740
pwc Failed to allocate decompress table.
However, the integrated microphone works.
The cam works well on FC3, but I can't say when it stopped working,
because I don't use the cam very often.
I would say its because the driver (or at least the compression module
used by the driver) has been removed from the kernel. It was removed a
while ago because the compression module was a precompiled non open
source binary driver. It was then reintroduced because it was reverse
engineered. It has since been removed a second time because the the
reverse engineering of the driver wasn't a clean room reverse engineer
of the driver.
So in short its because of issues with the binary part of the driver
its basically been removed pending a rewrite.
Regards
Peter