Baslinux mailing list

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

On Sun, 29 May 2005, David Moberg wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
>
> > The card I was trying to use is Vibra16 AWE32 but I also have three
> > SB16 AWE cards.
>
> I assumed that AWE32 was its own card, and the Vibra16 was a completely
> separate card. I have a Vibra16 which does _not_ have any AWE32 support,
> merely sb PCM and gameport support, opl3 FM support.

I have four AWE cards - the Vibra Awe32 works perfectly in DOS and linux. 
I have two SB16 Creative AWE32 cards, one with two inputs, one with only 
one (the one has a choice of the narrow white or the wide black plugs). 
These all have a place for two 30-pin SIMMs and I just learned I need to 
set jumpers to recognize the added ROM.  The fourth AWE card is AWE64 and 
it refuses to initialize in DOS but works in a Windows DOS box.  The DOS 
text file says to run it as a diagnostic tool but it just tells me 'cannot 
initialize awe' when I try.  It is supposed to act, in linux, like an 
AWE32 (no 32 extra software voices because CT keeps secret its drivers).

> > Which option is not available with Vibra16 -
>
> I believe you're asking about MIDI options. The option which is not
> available with a non-AWE Vibra16 is AWE32 MIDI support. Otherwise,
> they should be close to the same card.

Vibra16 was supposed to be lacking something.  Maybe you can't record with 
it?

> > Are you saying that awe32 requires
> > both opl and awe_wave modules (that it is based on FM synthesis) or
> > is it an entirely different way of playing midi sounds that does
> > not need opl?
>
> The latter. The opl3 module is used to drive the Yamaha OPL3 chip
> on the card. The OPL3 chip is an FM synthesizer. The awe32 module
> drives the AWE32 synthesizer, a separate system which accepts
> similar input but works differently. (It plays PCM samples like
> Timidity or a GUS would, whereas an opl3 just combines several
> sine and square wave generating circuits to produce "music")

Thanks, I will skip OPL for now and work on the AWE part.  I found a lot 
of rpm packages (at rpmseek.com) for the source code of awesfx after the 
author's bz2 package won't download more than 56K and bunzip tells me 
'premature end of code'.  This seems to be a problem with bz2 files.

I have one CT sound card which will not play synthesized music, or amplify 
the sound (it is a powered card), which implies I have a dead OPL3 chip 
(and dead transistor?).  It is set to speaker, not line.

Someone at The Answer Gang has been trying to help with this and says I 
may need to modify things in the rpm source code to link to the libraries 
I have.  I hope he can help with this.  They were looking for more 
questions to publish in the linux gazette and I have plenty for them about 
DMA and IRQ and isapnp (but you answered that part already).


Maybe you know why Win98FE suddenly stopped booting on the 
AWE64-containing computer after I changed PCI ethernet cards and put in a 
56K (plugnplay) modem?  Taking out the modem did not help.  Taking out the 
AWE64 (ISA) and putting in a PCI SB Live fixed Windows but now I have no 
drivers for the PCI card in any OS and have to work on that.  I will try 
other ISA SB16 cards.  The Live is not SB16.  Maybe the AWE64 card went 
bad?  Someone suggested the power supply was having problems (it came from 
a computer hit by lightning with dead motherboard and cards).  Maybe the 
motherboard is having more problems (it was DOA and needed 6 replacement 
capacitors).


I think I am probably having IRQ or DMA conflicts.  Disabling USB did not 
help.  All IRQs are taken.  I disabled the second parport on the MGA card 
so sound could have IRQ5.  The PCI video card grabbed an IRQ.    Should I 
be doing something in BIOS to assign IRQs and DMAs to the ISA sound card?
Maybe AWE64 uses more DMAs than AWE32?  I have a DOS text on awe from CT 
and discovered SOUND and AWE HOWTO's on the 7.1 installation CD.

The DVD-ROM in there disables DMA access the first time I try to read a CD 
with it, and also IRQ times out every time after that- should I be running 
hdparm to permanently disable DMA access like you said you did?  Or would 
it slow down the playing of DVD movies, which is all I need the drive for? 
The busybox hdparm did not give me anything about DMAs as an option.  I 
put in a SCSI CD-ROM drive instead, which works faster.  Does SCSI use 
IRQs and DMAs?

> > I don't have a MIDI keyboard and I don't want to use
> > Timidity because it is so large.
>
> Very understandable. Timidity's main size comes from the samples,
> though, which are also needed for the AWE32, so how much size
> can you save? Perhaps by using lower-quality samples, and/or an
> older Timidity, one can make Timidity as small as AWE32 samples.
> Most people's objection to Timidity is in its demand upon your
> main CPU.

The samples used by AWE cannot be very large, since they load in 512K (or 
2MB if I can enable the added 30-pin SIMMs with jumpers).  I have not 
looked at the linux soundbanks yet, still need to compile awesfx.

> > Do I really need isapnp if I can figure out the proper settings for
> > the sound card when inserting opl.o?
>
> ISA Pnp (or DOS tools) set up opl3. You probably won't be able to
> insert opl3.o without this first step.

But I don't need opl3 if I can get my AWE32 cards to work with AWE.
And I read that if you initialize the sound card in DOS you don't need to 
do so in linux, some registers (on the card?) are already set before you 
use loadlin.

> > I found the settings for my
> > opti 931 card online (in Bulgarian) and they included mpu_io and
> > mpu_irq, and it worked (played a wav file).  I don't want to change
> > the settings, I can use whatever it is set to.
> >
> > I was able to actually change pnp settings on one AWE64 card using
> > Win98, on a computer where DMA 0 and 1 and IRQ 5 are taken (not by
> > the MGA card, I don't know what has taken them).  But on two
> > Vibra16 cards, changing them in Win98 did not affect the settings
> > needed for DOS or linux.  Why?
>
> The former settings are capable of surviving a cold restart (stored
> on the card somewhere) but the latter are stored in the operating
> system?

Maybe that is the difference between CT and Vibra.  I was told the former 
is better for some reason.

I will be testing out various ISA and PCI sound cards for a while until I 
get something that works in three OSes, then attack awesfx.  I might see 
if DSL on CD can help identify settings (or determine if a card went bad).

> David