No Sound

Forum: Multimedia
Topic: No Sound
started by: trico1

Posted by trico1 on Mar. 06 2008,17:01

I have an old Pentium 200 laptop that I installed DSL Linux onto the hard drive. Everything is working good except that I don't have any sound. Can someone tell me how I can enable the sound card?
I am new to Linux so keep that in mind when you try to explain the process.

Posted by curaga on Mar. 06 2008,17:09

The first thing to do is to find out which sound card is inside the laptop. So google with the model name.

Then you would google with the sound card name and the words "linux oss sound" as DSL uses the Open Sound System, to find out which driver your card uses.

As your card has not been automatically recognized, it's ISA-based, meaning you will also have to look the IO address and DMA from the BIOS, and give them to the driver.

Can't give more instructions before knowing more of the sound card

Posted by trico1 on Mar. 08 2008,21:41

I couln't find the sound card model. The only thing that I found was that it is an Integrated 16 Bit 3D Sound card.

< http://h18000.www1.hp.com/legacys....cs.html >

The sound card settings in the bios are.

SB I/O address: 220h
WSS I/O: 530h-534h
AdLib I/O address: 388h
Interrupt: IRQ 5
1st DMA Channel: DMA 1
2nd DMA Channel: DMA 0

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Mar. 08 2008,23:58

Looks like crystal sound - you can probably use the sb/sb16 or cs* etc. modules.

If it's pci, you might be able to see the exact model from System Stats (or `lspci -v`)

Posted by trico1 on Mar. 09 2008,02:07

Quote (^thehatsrule^ @ Mar. 08 2008,18:58)

Looks like crystal sound - you can probably use the sb/sb16 or cs* etc. modules.

If it's pci, you might be able to see the exact model from System Stats (or `lspci -v`)

I'm new to linux. How do I use the modules. Are there any easy to understand articles that explain all this. I would really like to be able to use DSL on my laptop to listen to music and online radios.

Posted by curaga on Mar. 09 2008,05:37

Well, first try the sb module, as most cards are at least a little sound blaster compatible.

First go to a root console. To find out how to give the info to the module type "modinfo sb". Then give them while loading the module, like this:
modprobe sb ioaddr=220

After that check if your sound works. If it does, put that modprobe command into your /opt/bootlocal.sh to be loaded on boot.

Posted by trico1 on Mar. 09 2008,20:24

Quote (curaga @ Mar. 09 2008,00:37)

It worked. I added the "modprobe sb" line to my /opt/bootlocal.sh file and now it loads on boot.
Thanks for all your help.

Posted by reclusiarh on Mar. 29 2008,10:46

Hello to everyone!
I have a similar topic, so I'll first try posting here.

It's about a aureal vortex sound card.
I've been able to make it work on DSL before by following the advice on the old forum. That was years ago and now I don't recall how I did it.

The card is pnp. I installed the new version of DSL. I remember that last time I had to install alsa and some other packages to make it work...

Can someone help me with this?

Posted by kejava on April 28 2008,02:55

Seems that I'm in the same boat. I'm refurbishing about 100 old laptops using DSL for an NPO in philly. Many vary in processor speeds from 133 MHz to 333 MHz. It seems that they may be using ISA based sound cards since they don't show in the lspci output and they have config options in the BIOS.

Besides cracking open the laptop or searching endlessly on the web, how does one find out what kind of ISA sound card is being used on these old laptops? I recall there being some kind of PnP probe that ALSA would use long ago. Does DSL come with anything like that? Should I just modprobe until I find a module that works?

Posted by curaga on April 28 2008,13:50

There is a pnp probe utility, not in DSL and it might hang your machine, but if the web doesn't help it's pretty much the only choice..
If any of your laptops are Toshiba's, the info is here: < http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin....gdgmn.0 >

Posted by kejava on April 28 2008,15:15

thanks curaga. You're right there is some kind of probe utility for the ISA bus. Looks like the originall probe utility was called "sndconfig". Then when things went from OSS to ALSA, they integrated it into "alsaconf" and/or "alsawizard" ... maybe? Since DSL is using OSS, it looks like much of what is needed is bundled in the isapnptools package. Now, to figure out how to get it into DSL.

I'm a bit confused about the differences between some of the interfaces I've found. There are PnP and non-PnP ISA devices. I recall non-PnP ISA from the good old days of using jumpers to set the I/O address and IRQ values. In those cases, you simply set those values as parameters during a modprobe. But then there's the non-PnP ISA devices ... I believe their values are burned to flash memory on the card. Since my sound card is on a laptop, there are no jumpers but I can configure the card from the BIOS. I'm not sure if this means it's PnP or non-PnP. Seems there could be a different way of probing depending upon that.

I found some useful old information < here > if anyone is trying to track similar info.

Posted by curaga on April 28 2008,15:40

Unfortunately being able to configure an ISA card from bios on a laptop tells nothing of it's plug-and-play abilities.

There are two main compiling extensions, gcc1-with-libs.unc and compile-3.3.5.uci, if you wish to compile the app yourself

edit: Juanito proposed hwtools - scanport can recognize non-Pnp isa cards, but as with this stuff, can create a hang
< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....l=lspnp >

Posted by kejava on April 28 2008,16:10

Quote (reclusiarh @ Mar. 29 2008,10:46)

I've been able to make it work on DSL before by following the advice on the old forum. That was years ago and now I don't recall how I did it.

The card is pnp. I installed the new version of DSL. I remember that last time I had to install alsa and some other packages to make it work...

reclusiarh,

If the card you're talking about is an Aureal Vortex with a model name of AU8810, then it's not supported under OSS and you'll have to install ALSA to DSL. I'm basing this on OSS's hardware support site < here >. Go there and search for "vortex" so see.

If you're using the AU8820 or AU8830, you may be able to use the OSS module but I'm not sure what it's name would be. I just looked at the sound modules on my DSL install and compared them to what's on my Ubuntu install (ALSA). On Ubuntu they show up with predictable names: snd-au8810, snd-au8820, and snd-au8830. I don't see anything similar to that with DSL's OSS modules. That also makes me thing you need to go with ALSA.

You mentioned that this card is pnp. Just to clarify, that can go unsaid for devices that use the PCI bus

They built PnP into the PCI hardware spec. Where-as with ISA it was an after thought / hack. BTW, I could be wrong about most / all of this. I'm still learning the differences between OSS and ALSA module ... ISA pnp vs. ISA non-pnp. So double check my comments for yourself :;):

Posted by curaga on April 28 2008,16:34

There's one more thing, kejava - the site you referenced is the current, great OSS 4.0, while the OSS in the linux kernel is the old, 3.0 or 2.0, so the OSS in DSL might not have Aureal support at all.

The story of the sound is very messy and involves many Bold and the beautiful-like turns

But in a nutshell OSS started as GPL, got adopted to the kernel as it surpassed the then current thingies, then 4Front decided to get paid for their audacious talent and got a deal with Sun that still lasts, and as the OSS had turned proprietary, the kernel folks did what X.org did - fork the last GPL sources.
The Linux OSS mostly got bugfixes, while The OSS kept developing. Having a non-current sound system with no new drivers made some people mad, and they wrote a new unique sound architecture, ALSA.
It gained popularity, it was in-kernel and in-development, and the kernel OSS got marked "deprecated", as it should have, and is nearly gone in 2.6.24.
4Front tech didn't like this boycott, and released OSS 4 as GPL, returning to their roots. It hasn't been accepted to the kernel, but many claim it is superior to ALSA, works on all unixes, and it gets new support faster than ALSA (look at Creative X-fi for example, it was a black sheep for a year, then OSS had support, ALSA did a month later)

Some history eh

Posted by kejava on April 28 2008,16:37

Quote (curaga @ April 28 2008,15:40)

Unfortunately being able to configure an ISA card from bios on a laptop tells nothing of it's plug-and-play abilities.

There are two main compiling extensions, gcc1-with-libs.unc and compile.uci, if you wish to compile the app yourself

edit: Juanito proposed hwtools - scanport can recognize non-Pnp isa cards, but as with this stuff, can create a hang
< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....l=lspnp >

thanks again curaga,

I'll look into those options. I did notice in the dmesg output that isapnp is built into the kernel. So it seems that if the ISA sound card is truly PnP, is should dump some useful info to /proc/bus/isapnp. I should also see some useful info in dmesg output if it detects the cards. Perhaps that's a good first step in determining if one's ISA card is PnP. What do you think?

After that, moving to the utilities you suggested for non-PnP ISA cards might be the next logical step. We have so many laptops ... I'm just trying to come up with a "safe" procedure. Another thing I've read is that sometimes you have to toggle the "PnP OS" option in BIOS to get the PnP devices scannable. Seems that some systems need it ON while others need it OFF to get PnP working.

Tricky stuff

Posted by kejava on April 28 2008,16:43

curaga,

wow, thanks for the history lesson! i heard there was something very strange going on with audio device support. i really wish both groups could work together. all this forking is going create problems for the builders of distros, and especially the end users like me

Posted by curaga on April 28 2008,16:49

Yeah. I haven't checked the /proc files for isapnp, but I think dmesg shows the cards too if they are PnP, which makes life easier for you.

Posted by Juanito on April 28 2008,17:01

Quote

I'll look into those options. I did notice in the dmesg output that isapnp is built into the kernel. So it seems that if the ISA sound card is truly PnP, is should dump some useful info to /proc/bus/isapnp

- I had a lot more success (albeit with an irda device) with dsln for this as compared to dsl

Posted by kejava on May 11 2008,19:53

ok, we got 3 different compaq models working with the sb module so far. only one of them is giving a significant issue. upon loading the sb module, you get a loud screeching sound. turns out it's feedback from the microphone. the master volume levels, also available as two buttons, could add to the problem.

is there a way to mute the mic prior or upon loading the sb module? i've been playing with the umix command but can't seem to get anywhere. always screeches on reboot.

after this comes the gateway solos. those seem to load the sb module fine but the freeze the OS when I try to play a sound.