Hi everyone, I am trying the pcsnd driver patch (from ftp://ftp.uk.linux.org/pub/people/dwmw2/pcsp/) on my Pentium 100MHz laptop. It is supposed to provide some basic sound through the PC speaker for those that think that their box is too old to deserve a sound card... (Running potato on 2.2.17 kernel here)
Now, it doesn't work... Ok, I patched my 2.2.17 kernel source tree and built the driver as a module; I compiled also vplay in the pcsnd-kit that is at the same ftp site. The module loads ok and 'vplay' does indeed produce noise through the speaker... However playing the included enterprise.raw that is supposed to produce some StarTrek tune I get a FAX-like noise (you know, that sort of high-pitch rattling noise that you hear when you pick up the handset and discover it was a FAX...) A web search revealed that reading IDE devices interferes with the driver slowing it down, so I tried to play the tune while 'find / -name whatever' was running: it sounds a bit better but still far from giving the right frequencies! Ok, so does anyone have any experience out there? I had a look at the code and there are comments about the need of a time-delay loop when Pentiums will become common... (toghether with warnings that a 386SX may not be fast enough: as you guess the original code is rather old!) So do I need such a delay loop? On the other hand it is a mantained patch and I assume that people out there are using it on new machines... Of course it may just be a crap speaker... So, some success/unsuccess reports on machines equal or faster than mine would be much appreciated. Even better, if you have any idea on how this works and can diagnose my problem and/or have fixes to suggest... (Also, has anyone tried to build and use the mono or stereo DAC on parallel port that the driver is supposed to support?) matteo PS I read debian-user only in digest format, so please Cc replies to me if you are answering on that list only. --------------- Matteo Semplice Wadham College Oxford OX1 3PN U.K.