Baslinux mailing list

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

> > > > > > 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?


I just cold booted (power off, power on) this computer with a non-awe SB16 
card in it.  For some reason there is no high DMA (5, 6, or 7) available 
and hwinfo and linux don't see that they are taken.  Maybe some computers 
simply don't have those.  (This is also the computer where resizecons does 
not work right except with Matrox).

If I run DOS diagnose /s (in autoexec.bat or from CLI) the speakers start 
to hiss.  If I then insmod sb with settings, they stop hissing.

If I cold boot and hit F5 to skip autoexec.bat (don't run diagnose) and
insmod sb (dma=1, no high dma16 at all, 5 6 and 7 are not available) 
I can STILL play wav files with play and mplayer.  I can also play mp3 
files with mplayer or mpg123.  I was also able to play .wav files on the 
mad16 opti 931 card but I did not test mplayer or mpg123 on it.

Maybe these would sound better after initialization?  I can't here a 
difference but this is downloaded internet radio.  Perhaps higher sampling 
rates need initialization?  /proc/dma shows that 0 is SoundBlaster8.
What does high DMA do?  Would things sound better if low and high were 
not the same DMA?

The Crystal ISA card did not tell me there were any errors when I 
insmodded it (no DOS initialization).  I still have to try aumix on it but 
it is in the Ubuntu computer (which did not find it or the ISA network 
card).

Do you have the SB16 DOS diagnose program and if not, would you like a 
copy to test with?
> > 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.

We noticed that Ubuntu inserted all modules at boot time rather than using 
kmod.  This is likely to cause problems if you have three ISA cards, but 
it conveniently ignored both our sound and our network ISA card.  wvdial 
was able to find the plugnplay ISA modem but says there is no dial tone. 
We hear a dial tone. (I think it accepted a 720K floppy disk, which Redhat 
6 would not do).

> > 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).

Could I free up an IRQ by not using ide1 (secondary controller)?  I was 
told that hard drive and CD-ROM drive should if possible be on different 
controllers so they can transfer data faster  (or access hd and DVD-ROM 
drive at the same time with two IRQs while playing DVDs, or is mplayer in 
RAM already?).   I don't seem to need that IRQ now that I have PCI sound.


> >   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?
The BIOS, I think.  It reports the IRQs at boot time before DOS starts.
Linux seems to ignore 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.

The ATI and Trio3D are not vesafb, I tried them with your kernel.  They 
need their own fb drivers.  I think you compiled without those modules, 
but I want to recompile anyway to add sound.

> > > 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.
And big numbers.

Hardware motion compensation frees up the cpu?  Does the large heat sink 
and fan sit on top of some sort of graphics cpu?  The fan is as large as a 
486 cpu fan.

> > > 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.

If the MX-420 with 64MB works, the MX-128 with 64MB will probably work 
equally well, but not better, unless 128 is important.

> > 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.

I am very confused.  Should I try one of the above cards with xvidix? -vo 
xvidix or -vo vidix or -vo cvidix?  I can put in an AGP card along with my 
PCI nvidia and just tell BIOS which one to use.

> > 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.

Fine with me.

> > 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.

So did I, but it would not use them.  It seemed to want the same DMA as 
the sound card (DMA 1).

> > 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.

Why do ISA sound cards need DMA but PCI cards don't, even in linux?

> > 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?

All Live (emu1k01) cards are supposed to work with awesfx.  Since it is 
PCI and does not require isapnp I can try it with OPL after getting awe to 
work.  Not today. I still have to find the jumper on the three AWE cards 
to enable added RAM.


> > "Totem could not startup.  (movie player?). Resource busy or not available. "
>
> Never heard of Totem.
It tried to use this movie player to play sound.  No play or mplayer 
there.

> > 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.

It said we had no network card.  We had an old jumpered 3COM ISA network 
card that does not need to be initialized to work in BL2.  Maybe Ubuntu 
simply omitted ISA card support to fit into one CD.


Any ideas why four CD-ROM drives would not work with linux in one 
computer, and now the one that does work in linux won't work in Windows? 
They all work in DOS.  We are still trying to update a X2 modem which 
insists on SE for the program.  20X, no jitter.



> David