Baslinux mailing list

[Stephen Clement <s.clement AT sympatico.ca>]

sindi keesan wrote:

> I have BL2 on two pentiums with lots of RAM.  The first has a Vibra 16 
> AWE32 card that works well in DOS (plays midis that sound better than 
> usual) but I was told Vibra16 does not work with sb.o.  The second has 
> a SB16 awe64 that works under Windows but not DOS.
>
> I made the relevant device files (audio, dsp), and did the needed 
> insmods, and copied over play, workbone, and sox from the first to the 
> second computer.  The dev files are to fix the original problem of 
> missed /dev files in a few years worth of sb modules.  Christof put 
> together sound packages for bl2 which contain them.  Did I need 
> anything else?
>
> The second computer won't play sound except with cat (or DOS or Windows).
> Workbone:  #1 stopped.  Play - complaints about IRQ/DRQ conflicts.  
> The IRQ is 5 DMA 1 as in DOS where it works.  I read about someone 
> else who had the card working in a 486 but not in a pentium, same 
> software, tho usually it is really an IRQ or DMA conflict.  I tried 
> various other IRQs with no luck (they were all taken already).
>
> Just out of curiosity, I then tried workbone and play on the vibra16, 
> and contrary to all other reports, they work perfectly.

Soundblaster clones are very weird like that, sometimes they works, 
sometimes they don't. It's a hit or miss sort of thing.

> I will try a different SB card than the awe64, but it may be some 
> problem with this motherboard.  ASUS.  I have another similar one to 
> try next.
>
> ------------------
> I have also been trying to copy audio CDs.  We have three CD-burners, 
> which burn at 2X, 4X, and 8X.
>
> The 2X is finally working, after a period in which it gradually got 
> worse and would not even play a music CD.  The lens was very dirty and 
> needed cleaning with alcohol.  But is is rather slow.
>
> The 4X is one of those few that will not work with any but the most 
> recent cdrecord, which I don't want to learn to compile just now.  I 
> tried both linux and DOS cdrecord and then read that they don't work 
> with this drive.
> DOS cdroast works fine, but there is no way I know of to burn audio 
> CDs with it.  I have not tried DOS cd2wav on this one (it works on the 
> 8x).
>
> So I tried cdda2wav with the 8x.  In profile I can export 
> CDDA_DEVICE=/dev/hdc or /dev/hdd or if I want to use scsi emulation 
> 0,0,0.
> hdc is the burner.  I left it at default speed (24x reading) and it 
> rather slowly made wav files from the tracks (cdda2wav -B copies all 
> tracks individually - I discovered copying them as one big track did 
> not produce a playable audio CD so I added -B).  I could play the wav 
> files in DOS or on the other computer.  But near the end of copying 
> each track I would get all sorts of error messages, and when I burned 
> the result it stopped 20% of the way throughwith some complaint.  I 
> could play the parts that did burn.

Odd. Maybe report this to the cdda2wav mailing list?

> I read about this and apparently cdda2wav works with only some drives. 
> cdparanoia works with others but I did not want to learn that yet.

cdparanoia seems to work work with more drives, although it is MUCH 
slower (from my experiences with it).

> So I tried the 8X non-burner that I had in there.  I figured I had a 
> speed problem since some instructions for audio CDs say to try 4X if 
> you get errors.  I set speed with -S 8, and it copied at 
> min/max/current /1/8/1
> for much of the time, or sometimes at /1/8/3 or /1/10/4, but took 3 
> hours to copy a 1-hour CD.  I left it overnight and came back to pages 
> and pages of error messages.

> So I put in anohter drive someone just gave us and copied at 48X and 
> it told me the speed was 1/1/1 but went much faster.  On the last 
> track of 36 I again got pages and pages of error messages.

Bad CD, maybe? Maybe there is some form of copy protection?

> I could play the last three tracks and some others sampled from the 
> middle by copying them to DOS (the computer won't play sound in linux) 
> so I burned the disk.  It quickly burned the whole thing.  The first 
> time it only burned 20% but would play that on a boombox.  This time 
> the boombox could not find the CD and workbone told me no media and 
> the DOS players would not work either.  I could see a color change 
> meaning it was burned.
> The DOS players gave me track information, just would not play the 
> tracks. cdda2wav produced a .wav and an .inf file for each track, so 
> the inf files seem to be okay but not the wav files.  The burner is a 
> Samsung.
>
> Any idea what is going wrong?  I am no longer trying to use cdda2wav 
> on this burner, but why the error messages making wavs with two CD-ROM 
> readers?  And why, after I get playable wav files, would the burner 
> not burn them?  Is it also incapable of burning music CDs, not just 
> reading them to wav files?
>
> I will try the 2x next.  We are destroying a lot of CD blanks.
>
> I could also try to make .raw or .cdr files instead (-Oraw or -Owav) 
> and burn them with the -audio switch (which is default but I put it in 
> for cdrecord anyway). cdrecord -v -audio *.wav [or *.cdr or *.raw].  
> This burner makes data CDs just fine.
>
> Do any of you have any experience copying music CDs with linux?

Yes, and they are limited to GRIP/cdparanoia/cdda2wav, and all have been 
successful. The only other thing that I can thing of would be copy 
protection problems.

Thanks,

Stephen Clement