Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Tue, 24 May 2005, Mr Christopher Rose wrote:

> Will it work on my 100MHz laptop which is currently
> running BL3? Just curious.

Since BL2 and Bl3 both use 2.2.16 kernel, it should work (and if your 
sound chip is one of the ones I compiled for you may also get sound) if 
you have:

a)  a pentium (not 386 or 486)
b)  you are booting from ext2 partition - I compiled loop as module not 
part of the kernel, and it is needed to boot from fs.img on a DOS 
partition (the 20MB version of BL3)

I just noticed that the .sb kernel (which has two ethernet cards as 
modules which are not in BL kernels) and the .snd kernel (minus those two 
ethernet cards but plus several sound modules) are both 48066 bytes. They 
both include support for aic7xxx scsi card.  I don't think the regular BL 
kernels support scsi cards, just scsi-emulation (which explains why sd and 
sg devices were included- sda4 is parport zip drive, and I think sg0 is CD 
burner - but not sr devices, which are actual scsi CD-ROM drives).

You will also need to make any sound devices used by your sound program. 
Christof included them in his BL2 and BL3 sound packages, along with 
sb-related modules and programs used to play sound.  I also posted a 
mksdndev script that makes /dev/dsp and /dev/audio and /dev/sndstat, 
needed to use sox, mpg123 and mplayer, that should also work for non-sb 
sound cards (sb - soundblaster 16), but you will need to figure out which 
modules to use on your own.

For playing midis you may need other devices, not sure yet which ones 
(/dev/midi /dev/sequencer?) and perhaps also another module or two not in 
his package.

config.snd lists what is in the kernel, if you can understand it.

The linux SOUND howto lists sound chips supported by OSS sound system in 
linux, but it is not complete.  I managed to get my Opti 931 card to play 
sound (it is not on the list) by doing a search on Opti and linux and 
insmod, and a Bulgarian forum listed all the modules needed for the Opti 
930, which worked for the 931 (and appeared to work for 929A but I got an 
error message when I tried to play sound about not finding the device).
Is there a quicker/easier way to determine which modules a card needs?

Someone with Redhat (possibly a later kernel) got this information at boot 
time - required modules and I think also the settings needed for them (but 
could not understand it).  Is this ALSA?  Do you need PCI cards to get the 
info?  James says isapnptools can sometimes help to figure out the 
settings, or you can experiment a lot (but the opti cards turned out to 
use io=0x530 and I had given up after going from 00 to 360 by 10s).

Different cards need different settings - the PCI cards (and your laptop 
probably has a PCI chip) don't need them at all, SB needs io irq and dma 
(and in my newer computers also high dma, or dma16, to avoid dma 
conflicts).  Opti needed also two settings for mpu_io and mpu_irq.

Does dmesg report which sound chip is in a laptop computer?  There is 
nothing about my ISA sound card in there.  People were recommending 
various diagnostic programs for DOS and linux - which ones report the 
sound chip?  (My DOS program syschk does, but often gets it wrong.  SB16 
is sometimes reported as SB Pro).  I look on the card for the largest 
chip.

In the case of Crystal/opti cards both chips needed driver modules (ad1848 
for Adlib, and mad16 for the opti).  I was able to get useful info by 
searching on both chips at once.  Another Crystal ISA card with one chip 
appears to also need two drivers, and Crystal cards need uart401 too. 
Plus you need to start with soundcore soundlow sound.  And add yet another 
module for midi sound.

The newer PCI chips seem to work with just soundcore and the card-specific 
driver (esssolo1 for ES1868, es1371for Ensonic audioPCI and trident for 
Trident - but the latter two may also need a volume control program, as 
may one of the Crystal cards).

I have a Yamaha XG PCI card that is said to work in ALSA but to have no 
OSS drivers.

I hope that newer kernels, newer hardware, and ALSA, have automated this 
process.  It has taken me two years to get one of four opti cards to work. 
It helps if you can test them in DOS or Windows first, in case they are 
dead (several of mine were).

It is becoming increasingly clear to me why Steven did not include sound 
support in 'basic' linux.   It is fun but exasperating.  Even scsi is more 
predictable (if you get a PCI card, anyway).

Got to go test the other scsi external CD-ROM drive, mplayer with xvidix 
and some other experiments.  How do other people get sound to work?

> Pax,
> Christopher
>
>
> --- sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
> > keesan.freeshell.org/bl/zimage.snd
> > Similar to zimage.sb but with support for more sound
> > cards, not just sb16
> > (sb.o) but also es1370 es1371 cs4232 mad16 uart401
> > trident mss s_galaxy
> > ym3812 and opl-something-or-other.  Please let me
> > know if I missed
> > anything that you want.  see also config.snd and
> > config.sb.
> >
> >
> > Also has scsi support for aic7xxx (a common card).
> > Otherwise mostly
> > similar to BL2 kernel but no firewall support.
> > ppp/slhc is built-in.
> >
> > 465K, half the size of bare.i kernel.  Pentium.
> >
> > blfiles.htm
> > lists all my postings, including ghoscript 8.50 and
> > lynx 2.8.5.
> >
> > The problem I was having dialing with this kernel
> > was related to my
> > changing modems. USR needs AT&F1.
> >
> > To compare files in bash cmp file1 file2 will list
> > the first line and
> > character where they differ.  comm lists both files
> > somehow.
> >
> > keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
> > SDF Public Access UNIX System -
> > http://sdf.lonestar.org
> > _______________________________________________
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> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux
>
>
>
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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org