Very Computer

I am running RedHat 4.2 on my Pentium PC and I wanted to rebuild the
kernel to work with my SoundBlaster sound card.  It is a plug-n-play
card so I got the IRQ's and I/O addresses from the Win95 device
manager.  It told me that the IRQ was 5; it gave two DMA's, 1 and 5; and
it gave me three I/O addresses: 0220-022F, 0330-0331, 0388-038B.  I ran
make config and put in these values, but after recompiling the kernel
and rebooting, I still get no sound.  In fact, if I try something simple
like cat filename.au > /dev/audio, it tells me that the device does not
exist, even though I enabled that option when configuring the kernel.
I've tried all three I/O addresses with no luck.  Is there something
significant about the fact that this is a plug-n-play card?  Thanks for
any help you can offer

Nick Guarracino
Penn State University

Sorry to send two separate messages, but I just remembered that I do not
see any sort of sound messages when the machine is booting up.  I'm not
positive that it makes a difference but it seems significant to me.
thanks again.
nick guarracino

And lo, on Fri, 29 Aug 1997 00:40:38 -0400,

1) get isapnptools -- requires sound to be a module
2) get pnptools(?) -- patches PnP support into the kernel
3) Configure sound in DOS, use Loadlin to boot linux
4) Buy a commercial driver (I don't know the name of the place -- people
        have said it'll cost $30).

Only option 1 has worked for me (the only other thing I've tried was
option 2;  I still have yet to get around to fiddling with loadlin), and I
don't have MIDI. :( Others have gotten their card to work but I'm not one
of the lucky ones.

Devin

http://www.veryComputer.com/~nega/linux/

In a nutshell, this is what is required for ANY plug-and-play card..

You have to initialize the pnp card before the sound drivers
will work. The way I do this was with isapnptools- a set of
utilities that dumps the POSSIBLE settings for your
card into a file, then you edit out the ones you want
based on (for example) how windows allocates the
resources (DMA, IRQ, etc). There are other methods
possible, but Bucky recommends isapnptools.. So that was
the method I used. For isapnptools, head over to

ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/pnp/utils/isapnptools-1.10.tgz

and follow all of the directions carefully. I used Win95's
control panel system properties tool to print out all
of the settings that Win95 chooses for PNP, and used
those to set my isapnp.conf file. To initialize the hardware,
I run "isapnp" on my config file.. which means it tells the
card what IRQ, DMA, etc to use, making it ready to
accept sound instructions from the kernel. This can be
a little bit confusing.. I had a bit of trouble sorting out
all of the correct settings for my card (there are two
different synthesizer systems, and MIDI to boot on
this card).

Once you have the card settings in correctly, you need
to have kernel support. Sound should be compiled as
a module- you have to initialize the card from the
command prompt after you boot... In xconfig, you fill in the
appropriate irqs, dma channels, etc in the config
step. Add in /dev/audio support, and say "yes" to
anything that doesn't look like it will cause a hardware
conflict. I had to use a kernel patch for the awe64 that
is located at
http://www.veryComputer.com/~iwai/awedrv/
to add a kernel option for awe32 support.

then it is
$ make dep clean zImage modules modules_install

(coffee break)

Once the kernel is recompiled (and lilo reinitialized
pointing to my new kernel image), I rebooted. Yippee!

To turn on sound support, I do these commands
every time I boot:

$ isapnp /etc/isapnp.conf          # my config file
$ insmod sound                        # load the module
$ /home/quake/qwcl -mem 48  # Start Quakeworld

And I can finally hear the B*stards sneaking up on
me. Pow- rocket up the shorts! I haven't gotten
around to putting the sound initializtion sequence into
my startup files yet.. sometimes (here at work) I
play quake with sound off. :)

Getting sound working on your Linux system will
teach you a lot about hardware and kernels. I had
never done a kernel before, and I am now completely
comfortable with it. My kernel is also much better
tuned to my hardware now.. I am pretty familiar with
the settings etc for everything.

By the way- the "chickening out" way to get sound
working is to purchase OSS from
http://www.veryComputer.com/

I was able to get my Ensoniq Soundscape (at home)
working via their demo version (works for 5 days if
memory serves..) in about 5 minutes (not counting
the download).

--
Dan Beimborn
http://www.veryComputer.com/

You have to initialize the card.  It's a plug and play.  There are
several choices.  One is to use DOS to initialize the card and use
loadlin to boot Linux.  Another is to get isapnptools to set the card.
Isapnptools is available on RedHat's web page.  I have purchased the OSS
drivers ($20-$30 depending options supported).  They work fine with a SB
AWE 64 PnP.