general help with cd-rom and usb drives

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: general help with cd-rom and usb drives
started by: Justin2

Posted by Justin2 on Jan. 26 2008,18:37

Hello everyone, I am a fan of dsl and i am also very new to the world of Linux. If someone (s) could help me with a couple things it would be greatly appreciated. I just got a very old laptop off of ebay and dsl runs fine and everything on it but im having problems playing sound and accessing the cd-rom drive. The problem is I dont know how to. The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite Pro 400CDT
Model no:PA1207U CXTCD Another thing is when i get the PCMCIA cards i would like to know how to access my USB flash drives. Thank you for any help.

Posted by lucky13 on Jan. 26 2008,19:20

Can you give examples of what problems you're having? Is it trying to play musical CDs, streaming audio, etc.?

Data CDs and USB media have to be mounted. Which version of DSL are you using and how are you using it (live CD loaded toram, frugal install, hard drive install)? If you're using 4.x, you can right click on any of the desk top icons and get an option for mounting devices. Your CDROM should be listed as well as floppy (whether you have a drive or not). USB media should show up as /mnt/sda1, /mnt/sdb1, etc., in order of insertion. Don't forget to unmount (the same way) before removing.

Posted by curaga on Jan. 26 2008,19:23

Those old toshibas are great, I've owned several

Seems the sound chip is ESS 688. So, you would need to do what I did to my Satellite 200CDS.
The card is ISA, that's why it can't be autodetected. So go into the bios (press esc during boot),
and write up all the values for the sound (irq, address, dma). Then boot DSL, get a root console, and after using "modinfo sb" to see how to use the options (esstype is 688 by the way), use them like:

modprobe sb esstype=688 irq=blah blah.

Try playing sound, it should just work. Then put that modprobe line last into your /opt/bootlocal.sh to have sound every boot.

Posted by Justin2 on Jan. 26 2008,23:35

Hello again, thanks for the responses i hope they help.
!. im trying to play music cd's
2. i am using DSL 4.2.4
3. Hard drive install
4. no floppy drive
5. Thank you very much!

Posted by Justin2 on Jan. 27 2008,01:01

Curaga said:Try playing sound, it should just work. Then put that modprobe line last into your /opt/bootlocal.sh to have sound every boot.
I dont quite understand what you mean. Could you please elaborate or give me full instructions or something. Thanks!

Posted by curaga on Jan. 27 2008,05:53

Play sound - any sound will do, this will play some fuzz:

cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp

And if that modprobe line worked, ie you heard the fuzz, you can have sound enabled every boot, by adding the line with all your settings to the end of /opt/bootlocal.sh using your favorite editor (I use nano)