Baslinux mailing list

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

On Mon, 30 May 2005, David Moberg wrote:

> > > > 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?
>
> It is a (very crude) form of "initialization" which is built into
> sb.o.

Does this mean I don't really need to initialize SB cards in DOS in order 
to use them in linux without isapnp?  Or do I need both?  I can experiment 
by bypassing autoexec.bat.

> > 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?
>
> They are still required.

> > 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.)
>
> That is correct.
>
> > Should I set BIOS to permanently assign DMA and IRQ to the sound card?
>
> Can you? I would only do that if it kept everything (video card, etc.)
> happy.

I have fixed the problem on this computer that was keeping Win98FE from 
booting with the SB AWE64 card.  I replaced it with SB Live and it works 
with soundcore and the emu10k1 module (I skipped joystick support).


> .....
>
> [Creative Live!]
>
> > The person with problems posted something that might be dmesg, and it
> > could not find sound-slot-1 and sound-service-0-6, which I hope are
> > not required modules for this card.
>
> sound-slot-1 is what you put in modules.conf if you're using an automated
> module insertion system like kmod. sound-slot-1 is equivalent to /dev/dsp.
> If you're using kmod, when you try to write to /dev/dsp then kmod will
> instantly insert the sound modules listed in modules.conf after sound-slot-1.
> sound-service-0-6 is similar (midi?).

So if I typed play sound.wav it would insert the modules without me 
telling it to.  Would it remove them afterwards?

> > hwinfo reveals that ALL my IRQs are taken, and if I free one up by
> > disabling USB onboard, the video card grabs it.  Does the video card
> > work better with an IRQ?  If so, I will leave USB disabled unless
> > this PCI sound card also frees up an IRQ for video.  The scsi card
> > grabbed an IRQ.
>
> I don't think the video card needs an IRQ. hwinfo might not be telling
> you the whole story. /proc/interrupts shows all of the ones used by
> hardware in Linux.

The scsi and ethernet card are not in use and have not grabbed any 
modules, same for parport, but IRQ3 is taken (serial port - the modem I am 
currently using, I presume) and IRQ9 by the sound card ever since I 
inserted its modules.  IRQ 14 and 15 are taken by ide0 and ide1.  I have 
one hard drive.  Is ide1 the DVD-ROM drive (hdc)?  In DOS the IRQs are all 
taken by scsi, ethernet, lpt1, modem, com1, but here 4 5 7 10 and 11 are 
free.  Clever linux!

> > We were also given three more AGP video cards with big heat sinks
> > and/or fans and up to 128MB RAM.  Would they be better than the 64MB
> > heat-sink-less Nvidia for DVDs?
>
> About the best you can do is a card with motion compensation. Almost
> every card with more than 16MB has hardware mo-comp. Something with
> VIDIX drivers is easiest to get working in MPlayer. Here's a list
> of the VIDIX drivers (from MPlayer documentation):

I have an nvidia with 64MB, and the other cards I had until now are 1-4MB.
(Is the Nvidia also vesa frame buffer?)

> ATI
> later Mach64s

> Rage128      - we were given one of these (ATI) but it beeps and the
300MHz computer will not boot.  We can try a different computer.
128MB?  Big heat sink but no fan.

> Radeon
>
> Matrox G200, G400, G450 and G550
>
> Trident Cyberblade/i1 chipset, which can be found on VIA Epia motherboards.
>
> Although there is a driver for the 3DLabs GLINT R3 and Permedia3 chips, no 
> one has tested it, so reports are welcome.

> There's a relatively new nVidia driver out there, it's known to work on 
> Riva 128, TNT and GeForce2 chipsets, also others have been reported 
> working.

I have Nvidia GeForce MX420 which is probably too old.  And the other two 
cards we were given both have fans on their heat sinks and are:

inno3D MX(400) 64MG AGP  MX-128 Rev 2.1
ASUS AGP-V7700/32MB G-Force Pure DDR 32MB  - is this an older Nvidia too?

>    *
>
>      It's recommended to use the binary nVidia drivers for X before using 
> this VIDIX driver, because some of the registers which need to be initialized 
> haven't been discovered yet, so it will probably fail with the Open Source 
> XFree86 nv.o driver.
>    *
>
> This is very experimental code, just like nvidia_vid.

Not Xvesa.  But I thought xvidix did not require X11.
What I have right now works fine - Nvidia and vesa (or Xvesa for non-DVD).
I will experiment some other time with nVidia X drivers if you want to 
help.  I am still after awesfx source code, or some way to load sound 
banks into SB Live (it is somehow different from AWE and takes different 
sound fonts).

We put an older non-heat-sinked PCI card in the overclocked hard-wired 600 
with the three fans on the slot so as not to generate even more heat.

> It's been tested on SiS 650/651/740 (the most common chipsets used in the SiS versions 
> of the "Shuttle XPC" barebones boxes out there)
>
> Reports awaited!
>
> > Vibra16 was supposed to be lacking something.  Maybe you can't record with it?
>
> You can definitely record with it. It is likely the higher sample rate (which 
> is
> only available with newer drivers) and the awe32 midi support.

I have an AWE32 Vibra16 card working in DOS, Win98 and Linux.  No need for 
a higher sample rate for internet radio via modem at 24K.

> > 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.
>
> I have no idea as to what is going on here with Win98FE.

Win98FE boots again with SB Live instead of AWE64. I discovered the SB 
Live driver needs SE and I am abandoning sound in Windows.  At least it 
boots.  We were given a laptop with SE but I cannot upgrade my ISA modem 
in it.  "Argh"

> > 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?
>
> Probably.
>
> > Or would it slow down the playing of DVD movies, which is all I
> > need the drive for?
>
> Can you play DVDs with DMA enabled? Otherwise, there is no point
> to enable it. You will need to use vesa, lots of frame dropping
> without DMA unless you have a fast CPU.

I have no idea if DVD playing uses DMA.  But when trying to read a CD it 
would tell me, the first time, it had to disable DMA, and on subsequent 
attempts that the IRQ timed out.

I will try again now that I have a PCI sound card..............  Hey, this 
time (in 10 seconds) it mounted my AOL test CD without any complaints 
about IRQ or DMA.  Maybe you need to replace an ISA card to avoid your DMA 
problem too.  Hurray for PCI!

> > The busybox hdparm did not give me anything about
> > DMAs as an option.
>
> It is optional to include dma support in busybox hdparm. The
> -d option may work even if it's not listed in the (very terse)
> busybox hdparm --help.
I will learn about that some other time, I don't need it now.

We are going to test Ubuntu on the Crystal ISA sound card which plays 
silence without aumix in BL2 but I will stick with PCI on this computer. 
The other computers with scsi cards are not having problems but they also 
don't have DVD-ROM drives or Windows, which is where I had the problems.

> > I put in a SCSI CD-ROM drive instead, which works
> > faster.  Does SCSI use IRQs and DMAs?
>
> That depends on the SCSI card.

This SCSI PCI card does take up an IRQ when I insmod aic7xxx.  In DOS it 
always uses that IRQ.  Same for ethernet PCI card.

This PCI sound card does not seem to need DMA, nor does the modem, in 
linux.  In DOS (hwinfo) it said DMA 0 was the plugnplay modem.  Why did 
DOS use DMA for a card but linux does not?

Back to awesfx and playmidi.......
I will report on the hot video cards another time (for xvidix).

Anyway, SB Live is good for BL3/BL2 OSS sound and can solve problems if 
you have three ISA cards and resulting conflicts.

We are trying to test the Crystal ISA card now in Ubuntu.  Can't find any 
way to make an xterm or rxvt.

"Totem could not startup.  (movie player?). Resource busy or not 
available. "

Ubuntu has not found this sound card.  BL2 did a lot better with it (I 
have not yet tried aumix to actually get sound out of it but the modules 
inserted just fine).  Does Debian normally include isapnp?  We will try an 
ISA SB16 next (without and then with DOS initialization), then the Trident 
PCI card.

We finally found an xterm and there is no sound module inserted, but there 
is gameport support and vesafb.  This AGP card did not work with Xvesa 
(very odd colors) so we will use your vesafb kernel with it (or compile 
one based on it with sound also added).  So Ubuntu has its uses for 
identifying NEWER hardware.  We may try SuSE here next.

We are using 75% of 2.1G which is less than the 1.8G that was not enough 
to install on.  It must have deleted packages after installing everything.

I have not found any linux I like 1/4 as much as BL. We can use 
the kernel and modules from Ubuntu with the Cd-ROM burner and cdrecord.

> David