Baslinux mailing list

["David Moberg" <davidjmoberg AT lycos.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "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?

Maybe. The sb.o initialization is a little too crude to get MPlayer
or mpg123 working on its own, but play will work. OPL3 won't work,
either. Does AWE32 work without DOS/isapnp initialization?

> > 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?

There is no automatic module removal with kmod at this time.

> 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)? 

Yes. hda and hdb are on ide0. hdc and hdd are on ide1 (master and
slave, respectively).

>   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!

DOS is doing some PCI initialization on its own? Or perhaps it's
the BIOS?

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

Yes. I'd be surprised if there was any card with that much memory that
didn't do vesafb.

> > ATI
> > later Mach64s

Mach64 3D Rage Pro is what I have. It was one of the first consumer-level
cards (1997) to get hardware motion compensation. 1997 was when the DVD
craze was just beginning.

> > 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.

128-bit. Graphics card manufacturers seem to like confusing labels.

> > 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?

MX is a stripped-down Geforce something. Somewhat like a Celeron
and the various Pentium incarnations.

> Not Xvesa.  But I thought xvidix did not require X11.

VIDIX doesn't, per se. It can work with -vo vesa, too. But this
particular vidix driver seems to need some card initialization.
I've read somewhere that you can use the cvidix output driver
instead and bypass all of this. This seems to conflict with the
statement above.

> 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 would want to stay as far away from nvidia x drivers as possible.

> 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!

This DMA problem doesn't appear to be a conflict. It looks like
the drive itself doesn't like DMA. If I turn DMA on and try to
read anything from the disk in the drive, I get a DriveReady
SeekComplete error. The whole computer freezes. The keyboard
and mouse completely die, and I need to hard reset it.

It does the exact same thing if I remove the two ISA cards.
I have plenty of free DMAs.
 
> 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?

This is PCI, huh? I think Linux can directly access serial ports
which are on PCI boards. DOS probably naively assumes that all
PCI cards need a DMA. Caution: this will only work for 1 to
4 serial ports (internal modems have a built-in serial port,
unless they're winmodems) depending on the number of existing
serial ports.

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

I wonder if it has an OPL3 or AWE chip for MIDI?

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

Never heard of Totem.

> 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?


Yes.

David

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