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[Spca50x-devs] Accessing Philips SPC200NC at wrong resolution(?) leads to system crash

Hi!

Since I'm new here: Thanks to all involved creating the driver. I just
got my webcam yesterday and thanks to your effort I got it working
almost straight out of the box. Unfortunately, I'm encountering a
problem I couldn't find in the FAQ nor the archives of the mailing list.

I'm running a Philips SPC200NC Vimicro PAS106 webcam under Linux 2.6.16
using spca5xx 00.57.11.

modprobeing the driver finds the webcam and recognizes its abilities:

| [spca5xx_getcapability:2198] maxw 352 maxh 288 minw 176 minh 144

spcaview claims a higher resolution as being available:

| **************** PROBING CAMERA *********************
| Camera found: Philips SPC200NC  
| Bridge found: ZC301-2 
| Bridge find ZC301-2 number 13
| StreamId: JPEG Camera
| quality 1 autoexpo 1 Timeframe 0 
| Bridge find ZC301-2 number 13
| Available Resolutions width 640  heigth 480 native  
| Available Resolutions width 352  heigth 288 decoded  
| Available Resolutions width 320  heigth 240 native *
| Available Resolutions width 176  heigth 144 decoded  
| *****************************************************

Of course, running spcaview with -s 640x480 doesn't work but delivers an
ugly green picture and lots of "VIDIOCMCAPTURE: requested dimensions too
big" messages to syslog -- no surprise there, since 352x288 is the maximum
resolution of the webcam.

My problem is with other applications (tested with camorama and mplayer)
accessing the cam at 640x480: this inevitably leads to a system freeze 
where the system isn't even responding to a ping from the outside. 
Unplugging the cam doesn't help.

(At least I *think* the freezes occur because of accessing the cam at
that resolution -- I've only tested it a couple of times  after I had 
the suspicion that that's the reason.)

I don't get any syslog entries from these freezes, so this doesn't help
at all.

Again, I do know that 640x480 is more than the webcam can handle, but
seeing the system freeze because of a typing error is something that
doesn't really make me happy -- especially since I sometimes let other
people use this computer.

Any hints on what I can do to avoid situations like that in the future?
If you need more info, please just drop me a line.

Any help appreciated,
Bjoern

PS: I also crosschecked against Linux 2.6.15 and spca5xx 00.57.10.

-- 
Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its
tendency to bend at the knees.
                                         --Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay


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