thanks for the reply.
the cabling is fine, i've been using it with 2 other tuners.
As a test, today i've reconfigured my setup with new cabling (took all day).
I've now got an octo lnb for 28.2e and have put 4 of the inputs to the 6909 in Mode 1.... so i can use each tuner independently (all 8) and ignore diseqc for now and test with just 1 sat. This way i can just later buy a quad tuner which i'll hook up to my disqec switches...
BUT - same problem. tvheadend unresponsive, not scanning properly, only getting High Horizontals..
so the issue is not just mode 0, it's mode 1 as well
Whether this is a driver issue or faulty card, i do not know, but i'm incredibly frustrated atm..
edit:
sometimes it looks like all 8 tuners are scanning.. but then they all stop and don't receive a signal because they are trying to scan V channels.. othertimes completely locksup tvheadend, yet i can still ssh and tvheadend isn't using lots of cpu or anything...
i've tried just enabling 2 tuners (i thought maybe there was too much power draw with 8), no luck and same issue.
current setup with mode 1, connected to octo lnb (just 4 of the ports)
what happens 90% of the time if start to scan.. stuck and takes a long time to kick back in (just trying with 2 tuners enabled)
the physical box i'm using now for testing is a Hex Core Xeon x5670 @ 4.2ghz ... using a G1. Assassin x58 Motherboard - it's an old box but it's top spec and certainly not lacking performance.