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>
>
> > I found a howto on AWE32 in linux, which says that if you boot
> > linux with loadlin from DOS you don't need isapnp initialization,
> > if you initialize in DOS.  I have lines in autoexec.bat about awe,
> > generated by the SB16 'diagnose' program.  I also have a message on
> > one of the three AWE computers 'awe initialization failed' so it
> > must be working on the other two.  (The one that failed is the
> > awe64).
> >
> > What does initialization do?
>
> It tells the PnP card what IO address and IRQ to live at. It's
> like setting the jumpers on a non-PnP card.

With the sb I specify the address and IRQ with insmod - is this instead of 
initialization?  Same for the Crystal ISA card and the Opti ISA card.  The 
SB was already initialized in DOS but the Opti was not, and it plays wavs.
Two SB clones also work in linux and the DOS initialization program did 
not recognize them.  If I were to run isapnp maybe the settings would not 
be required after insmod?

> > Forgetting initialization, what I need to do is insmod all the
> > modules, but add to the insmod sb line:  mpu_io=0x300 (for some
> > reason 330 is busy on my newer computers, or maybe won't work for
> > these cards).
That part did not work - it just complained when I tried.

> > There was no mention of mpu_irq here, which was needed by the opti 931 card.
>
> Does it demand mpu_io? MPU is for sending MIDI commands to a synthesizer.
> My plain Vibra16 doesn't need it. cat /proc/ioports to see what's using
> what.

I guess I don't need that since I have no synthesizer.  That might be why 
it complained.

> > I presume I need v_midi too.
>
> I don't think so. I haven't checked modules.dep from Slackware yet, but
> I believe v_midi is for something else.
Christof included it in his package but nothing else seems to depend on it 
so I will remark it out.

> > Then /usr/local/bin/sfxload /usr/local/lib/synthgm.sbk
> > (using the files from the awe32 tools package, I presume).
> >
> > They set the volume with a 'volume 30' (maybe that comes with the
> > awe packages?) but I could try aumix or leave it at the default if
> > that works.
>
> The OSS mixer might not allow you to change these settings. This is
> one of the advantages ALSA has over OSS: the mixer isn't as limited.

As long as I get any amount of sound out at all I can change the volume 
with the volume knob on the radio or on my older CT cards (or the Sound 
Galaxy if I get that going with s_galaxy.o).  aumix controls the mixer, 
which specifies how loud to make each source?  (FM synthesis, input from 
CD, wav player, etc.)

> > I will try this tomorrow after we put back together one or more of
> > these computers with awe cards.  The drives and cards are playing
> > musical slots this week as we discover dead or failing drives.  You
> > can apparently kill a 250MB drive by plugging the signal cable in
> > backwards.
>
> Tell me about it. I've lost several drives this way.
> IDE cables are supposed to be keyed so that they insert only one way.

My partner insists that should not have caused a problem as he does it 
frequently.  Now he will be more careful.  Some of the cables are not 
keyed.  I should get rid of them.

> > The drive that had Ontrack Overlay on it and failed and
> > had Ontrack removed and was working again just failed again (it is
> > recognized during boot but programs cannot access it).
> >
> > Our largest free replacement drive (4G) had EZ-DRIVE (which means
> > it was not possible to partition it with fdisk or PQMagic), which I
> > removed with a PowerMax low-level format.  I can't format it
> > because e2fsck can't find the superblock or it is bad.
>
> Why do you need e2fsck to format the hard drive?

I need mke2fs.  I confuse the two.  I will try again with mke2fs.  No 
wonder e2fsck failed to find a non-existent superblock.  Thanks.  Some of 
my problems are simple to fix.  Now my partner can put two or three 
linuxes on the drive until he gets tired of that game.  I wonder what to 
do with 15MB - copy all my music CDs to MP3s?  BL2 with compiler, source 
code for various packages, kernel source code, etc. etc. fits on 1G with 
plenty of room to spare.

The drive was not very useful in DOS because DOS only finds 503MB due to a 
1024 (1096?) cylinder limit.  A friend has some program that modifies the 
numbers to make fewer cylinders (it has over 8000) and more heads or 
sectors but who needs 4G for DOS?

> > PowerMax
> > tells me the drive is failing but we might use it for a while until
> > it dies.  The 8G drive is also failing, which you can tell by very
> > slow measured speeds.  The 4G took about 10 minutes for the
> > 90-second test, but perhaps 90-sec is for 200MB drives.
The perfect drive to waste on big new distributions in a spare computer.

> > The 600MHz computer that had an onboard parport whcih produced
> > garbage in DOS and nothing in linux is working fine now that I
> > changed from 3f8 to 3bc.  ????  IRQ5 is STILL taken by something,
> > no idea what.  I put in a parport card set to IRQ 5 and it printed
> > even though a sound card won't work as IRQ 5.  ???   It also
> > printed if set to IRQ7.  The onboard parport was disabled.  I can't
> > boot if I set an ISA card to the same address as an onboard port,
> > but they don't seem to mind sharing IRQs.  Why are sound cards
> > fussier?

> Sound cards are complicated beasts. They're designed so that nothing
> can pre-empt them if data is sent to them. If they didn't do this,
> sound quality would suffer badly.

Should I set BIOS to permanently assign DMA and IRQ to the sound card?
> David
>
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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org