Phil Brutsche wrote: > A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far way, someone said... > > > I've been trying off-and-on for months to get sound working > > on this box. The Readme's and HOWTOs and Dogpile searches > > just aren't answering my questions. > > > > I've got an ES1371 (Audio PCI 97) sound card (from Gateway > > Computers in an E-4200 box). > > > > First Question: When running "make menuconfig", I go into > > the "Sound" entry and then press "m" on "Sound Card Support" > > to make it a module. This expands into several other > > options: > > > > Ensoniq AudioPCI (ES1370) > > Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI 97 (ES1371) > > S3 Sonic Vibes > > Support for Turtle Beach MultiSound Classic, Tahiti, > > Monterey > > Support for Turtle Beach MultiSound Pinnacle, Fiji > > OSS Sound Modules > > > > Having read that some es1371 boards are actually es1370s, I > > selected both Ensoniq and marked them with an "m" to make > > them modules. > > Ok. > > > I don't really understand the difference between the OSS > > Sound Modules and the others above that. I kindda thought > > that all the sound drivers in the kernel were OSS drivers, > > but this leads me to think that there are two types: the > > ones that are not OSS, and the ones that are. > > Technically they're all OSS drivers - they all support the same > programming interfaces. The 'OSS Sound Modules' are what used to be known > as OSS/Lite - a freely available version of the Open Sound System drivers, > which are payware and available for many Unix (and Unix-like) operating > systems. > > > Anyway, if I "M" the OSS Sound Modules entry, I see that the > > "100% Sound Blaster Compatibles" includes "ESS", and I > > wonder if this is necessary for support of my card. Even > > though my card is an "ES" and not an "ESS", I still have my > > suspicions. > > You don't need anything under the OSS Sound Modules. > > > So my first question: Do I just need the ES1371, or do I > > need the ES1371 and the ES1370, or do I need the ES1371, the > > ES1370, and the OSS with 100% SB Compatible, or do I need > > some other combination? > > You need es1371 (based on your output from lspci below) and nothing else. > > > Second question: I'm assuming that I can install this/these > > drivers as modules rather than compiling them directly into > > the kernel. Is that a correct assumption? > > That's correct. > > > Okay, having compiled the ES1370 and ES1371 drivers in as > > modules, and having done a make dep, make clean, make > > bzImage, make modules, and make modules_install, and having > > copied the arch/i386/bzImage file to /boot/vmlinuz and > > modifying my lilo.conf file as necessary and re-running lilo > > and rebooting, I'm supposed to see (according to what I've > > read) references to the sound card fly by at boot time. > > Ok. > > > Yet I don't see such a thing. Furthermore, according to the > > HOWTOs, etc, I'm supposed to be able to do a "cat > > /dev/sndstat", yet that returns a "No such device" error. > > The /dev/sndstat file does exist. > > Did you edit /etc/modules to load the sound driver at boot time? > Unfortunately Debian's 'PnP' isn't as smart as RedHat's. > > > I suspect the problem is IRQ,DMA,IOport-related, but the > > HOWTOs seem to focus on ISA PnP cards rather than PCI, so > > I'm a little confused. I have learned enough to run "lspci > > -v" which returns quite a bit of info on various cards > > (ethernet, ISA bridge, etc); it also has the following: > > > > 00:0e.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq ES1371 > > [AudioPCI-97] (rev 06) > > Subsystem: Ensoniq: Unknown device 1371 > > Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 96, IRQ 11 > > I/O ports at 1080 > > Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 1 > > You don't need to worry about IRQs and what not - this is a PCI sound card > - the BIOS takes care of all that at boot time. > > > When I try to play sounds (using sox or splay, etc, or > > saytime), I sometimes get garbled sound, but more often than > > not, messages like "no such output file" or "no such > > device", etc. Hopefully someone can help me figure out where > > to go from here. > > A quick summary: > > * Run 'modprobe es1371' > * Try to play a sound file - I like to use the package sox for that; it > works better than cat'ing the file to /dev/dsp. > > -- > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > Phil Brutsche [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > "There are two things that are infinite; Human stupidity and the > universe. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I appreciate your response. Concerning the OSS/Lite drivers: So do I understand that the division of the two categories (the five or six drivers on the outer level vs the OSS category) are simply because the OSS ones came from a different source? In other words, the kernel developers developed the ES1370/1 and Turtle Beach and S3 drivers, so they left these in the outer level, but the OSS drivers came from the OSS people and so were put in a different category? OK, I can live with that; it's confusing to someone who doesn't know the history, but that's okay; Life's a classroom. The contents of my /etc/modules is: # /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time. # # This file should contain the names of kernel modules that are # to be loaded at boot time, one per line. Comments begin with # a `#', and everything on the line after them are ignored. # An entry named `auto' will cause the system to start kerneld immediately. # Kerneld then loads modules on demand. `noauto' disables kerneld completely. #auto nfs smbfs vfat psaux serial lp 3c59x es1371 Running "modprobe es1371" doesn't show any output, and when I then try to "sox wls.wav" or "sox jesus.au", I get: sox: Usage: [ gopts ] [ fopts ] ifile [ fopts ] ofile [ effect [ effopts ] ] Failed at: No output file? (I think maybe I'm not providing sox with enough parameters.) When I run "splay wls.wav", I get pretty sound. When I run "splay jesus.au" I get no output, either audio or text. When I "cat wls.wav > /dev/dsp" I get nasty squeals. When I "cat jesus.au > /dev/dsp" I get rough-sounding but more-or-less intelligible sound. "saytime" sometimes results in a quick blip, sometimes in a choppy "The time is now four-twenty-blip". When I run "mpeg_play [some_movie].mpg", I get good video but no audio. (But then looking at "man mpeg_play" I learn that it doesn't play audio tracks, so never mind.) Running "xanim +Ae [some_movie].mpg", I get choppy video and no audio. Same without the "+Ae" option. The sound card worked well in Windows, so I'm confident the hardware is okay. Thanks for any help!
