trouble with soundcard ESS 1878

Forum: Multimedia
Topic: trouble with soundcard ESS 1878
started by: lupus

Posted by lupus on Jan. 15 2005,23:56

I have sound card ESS 1878 on laptop (compaq armada 1580dmt, pentium 150 mhz), and i have no sound. what can i do? (dsl is installed on HD)
can alsa help me? if so, where can I download it.
laptop isn't connected to Inet, so I can't use apt-get.

Posted by edard on Jan. 16 2005,00:29

Not exactly a match but here is a direction to try. I had an ES1788 AudioDrive that was giving me fits and finally got success with this:

modprobe sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 esstype=1788

then when it worked I added it to /ope/bootlocal.sh to load at each boot. Your information will be different but with the right values it will likely work.
HTH

Posted by lupus on Jan. 16 2005,03:52

Quote (edard @ Jan. 15 2005,19:29)

It's same values (but esstype=1878) and it's working!

thanks a lot.

Posted by rja on Jan. 28 2005,23:53

My Compaq Armada SB (like a 1592*) has an ES1878. You can use either the sb module or the Alsa snd_es18xx or snd_sb16 modules.

modprobe sb dma16=5 io=0x220 mpu_io=0x330 dma=1 irq=5
modprobe opl3 io=0x388

or Alsa (not all of these options are needed):

modprobe snd_es18xx enable=1 isapnp=0 port=0x220 mpu_port=0x330 dma1=1 dma2=5 irq=5 fm_port=0x388

or (not tested well because I use snd_es18xx):

modprobe snd_sb16 port=0x220 mpu_port=0x330 irq=5 dma8=1 dma16=5

Posted by lostcity on Feb. 14 2005,05:17

Quote (edard @ Jan. 15 2005,19:29)

I have a laptop with 9.2 DSL on an HD install. I used modprobe sb i/o=0x220 dma=5 irq=1. I get sound okay but it is choppy and seems to stutter. Any ideas on a fix for this issue.

Thanks in Advance

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 15 2005,04:36

Try a different dma number.

Posted by tempestuous on Feb. 16 2005,14:12

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 (???)

Posted by green on Feb. 19 2005,20:06

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.

Posted by lostcity on Feb. 25 2005,02:34

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

Posted by tempestuous on Feb. 28 2005,12:42

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