Baslinux mailing list

[cce AT volny.cz]

Hi Steven, Chris, and list,

as I wanted to see what an old soundcard, here on one of my
machines, can do I tried out some sound applications. My attempt
to create BL add-ons out of them was only half-successful.

PLAY and SOX are available as reasonably sized Slackware
packets, so people could easily get and install them. But
the speech-to-sound processor SAY, a program I found
long time ago in the muLinux distribution, could be interesting
for BL users, too. I uploaded the version for BL1 to

    http://www.volny.cz/cce/sb-bl1.tgz

it should work provided that you have a soundblaster compatible sound
card. I could, however, not get to work the version for BL2 at

    http://www.volny.cz/cce/sb-bl2.tgz

although everything runs fine on my fresh hard disk installation
of BL2. The dependencies in the modules and in the binary 'say'
seem to be far too complicated for me. May be somebody on the
list has the skill, time and interest to create serious
add-on packets out of this.

Best regards
Christof Lange

-----------------------------


Installation for BL1
------------

1. Connect a Soundblaster or compatible soundcard (ISA)

2. Unpack sb-bl1.tgz to \

3. Run sndsetup and check for errormessages:

#!/bin/sh
# sound card will be initialized by loading the sound module
insmod sound
# hope that your sound card is a standard one
# and the following test will work
/usr/doc/sb-bl/test
# uncomment next lines, if you want to keep the module
echo -n "Do you want to delete module from disk? (y/n) "
read
if [ $REPLY = 'y' ] ; then rm -r  /lib/modules/2.0.34/sound; fi


Installation for BL 2
------------

1. Connect a Soundblaster or compatible soundcard (ISA)

2. Unpack sb-bl2.tgz to \

3. Edit the file ~/sndsetup according to your hardware

#!/bin/sh
# if you want to initialize your soundcard on startup
# you may rather include these lines in /etc/rc.d/rc.S
insmod /tmp/sound/soundlow.o
insmod /tmp/sound/soundcore.o
insmod /tmp/sound/sound.o
insmod /tmp/sound/uart401.o
# change the next line according to your system
# settings correspond to the DOS evironment variable BLASTER
insmod /tmp/sound/sb.o io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1
# then see whether the following test will work
/usr/doc/sb-bl/test
# if not then choose alternative drivers from /tmp directory
# look up dependencies in file /root/modules.dep
echo -n "Do you want to delete modules? (y/n) "
read
if [ $REPLY = 'y' ] ; then rm -r  /tmp/sound; fi


4. Run sndsetup and check for errormessages

5. Replace sound modules in sndsetup with others from /tmp/sound
   until the demonstration works. You have to guess which driver
   corresponds to yur hardware. Look up dependencies in the file
   modules.dep. After loading the neccessary modules the whole
   directory /tmp/sound can be deleted.


Problems with BL2 version
--------

I installed the package without any problem to my hard disk. With
the RAM version it turned out to be quite complicated.

The first problem occurred with one of the sound modules. It needs
the bare.i kernel from Slackware 7.1, because the bl-2.10 kernel
does not want to install the module sound.o. An error-message tells
you: "isa_dma_bridge_buggy". May be this can be corrected with the
next compile of basiclinux kernel?

The second problem is worse: I could not find a statically linked
executable for 'say' that would work with Slackware 7.1. The packet
includes a binary from the latest muLinux distribution. It is linked
to libc.so.5 that is part of Slackware 7.1 distribution. But there
must be still something else missing in the RAM version. Even with
additional library and bare.i kernel 'say' does not work; ldd does
not help in this case. For me it is time to give up. Unfortunately I
have no idea where the source for 'say' can be found.

To install the packet you need to have more than 8 MB RAM on your
system. The additional libc.so.5 library and a wide range of sound
drivers will be copied to the second RAM disk (mounted to /tmp). After
having loaded the apropriate drivers you are, however, free to delete
them.



_______________________________________________

 Christof Lange <cce.zizkov AT volny.cz>
 Prokopova 4, 130 00 Praha 3, Czech Republic
 phone: (+420) 222 78 06 73 / 222 78 20 02
 http://www.volny.cz/cce.zizkov