Multimedia :: trouble with soundcard ESS 1878

Try a different dma number.

So many of us have stuggled to find the configuration settings of these ESS sound cards!
Lostcity, see my reply to another ESS user's query at http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;t=4615
If you configure your sound card permanently in /etc/modprobe.conf (possible with a hard drive install) then your problem of "stuttering" should be fixed by adding the line -
options sound dmabuf=1
I'm not sure how to achieve this manually ... perhaps -
modprobe sound dmabuf=1 (???)

Not sure about a HD install, but you might be able to add what you did to bootlocal.sh so it boots up with it.

Issue was resolved with esstype=1869. Will let xmms play CD's?

Well done. But this is strange - the option "esstype" is to override the sb driver's unreliable autodetection of ESS chips - mainly in terms of their different clock speeds. So it should normally fix the problem of sound playing too fast or too slow.
Details are found in the linux kernel source - /usr/src/linux/Documentation/ESS. Here is the relevant part -

> For ESS chips an additional parameter "esstype" can be specified. This controls
> the (auto) detection of the ESS chips. It can have 3 kinds of values:
>
> -1 Act like 2.0 kernels: only detect ES688 or ES1688.
> 0 Try to auto-detect the chip (may fail for ES1688)
> 688 The chip will be treated as ES688
> 1688 ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ES1688
> 1868 ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ES1868
> 1869 ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ES1869
> 1788 ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ES1788
> 1887 ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ES1887
> 1888 ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ES1888

When setting up your ESS card for the first time, it's a good idea to check dmesg after loading the sb driver. This will indicate what ESS version the driver detected - if the model number is correct, there's a good chance all is well and you should not need to use the esstype option at all.
Craig S

Next Page...
original here.