How to control the (BS2)S7VZ6306 tuner

S7VZ6306 is a tuner I found in a Comag SL100 HD satellite receiver. A very useful thing is that the tuner is soldered onto a small board that is plugged into the main receiver board using a connector. So you can take it out easily to replace it or use it in a project. Information contained in this article applies to any satellite tuners that use IX2470 PLL circuit.

The tuner is half-NIM type (without included demodulator - the demodulator IC is on the main board). Although I could find no datasheet of the tuner, the manufacturer has written pin labels on the small PCB where the tuner is soldered. When opening it, I could find an IX2470 integrated circuit. No datasheet for this one either. Digging deeper, I found that this IC was used in some TBS PC tuner card and there are open source drivers for it. Pinout and software - that's all I needed to control the tuner outside of the original box.

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