Baslinux mailing list

[Samual Acorn <sam.acorn AT gmail.com>]

use the 'synthgs' soundfont from creative labs... (that will fix the
instrument problem...email if you want me to send it)

if the card is pnp try changing the 'pnp os' option to 'off' (if you
havent already) the bios of my comp sets everything up... including
the awe32 pnp...  (the agp vidcard and usb addon card... and the mobos
usb.. all share the same irq [11]... the soundcard is given irq 5
[sound] and 10 [ide].. the nic isnt pnp so it has irq 9 set as
isa/eisa in the bios...)

in my linux boxen that has a non pnp sb16 i have the irq that the sb16
is on (5) set to isa/eisa along with dma 1...  (and irq 9.. for the
nonpnp nic..)

strange that the bios is setting cards up to bump into one-another...
shouldnt be doing that...  PCI should be able to share IRQs and allow
the isa cards free reign...

On 07/07/05, sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
> 
> I have a DVD-ROM drive as /dev/hdc, in a computer with scsi and ethernet
> pci cards and all the IRQs taken (even if I disabled onboard USB).  I was
> until now not able to use my ISA/pnp CT AWE32 without causing an IRQ and
> DMA conflict, timeout and disable when I tried to mount a CD.  This
> wasted about 10 seconds each time.
> 
> So I was using a pci sound card without AWE support and thinking about
> whether to learn ALSA sound so as to use a pci SB Live! card instead
> (because the AWE feature of it is not supported by OSS, or even DOS).
> 
> David Moberg suggested adding to the loadlin line bios=nopci so that linux
> would ignore however BIOS was setting things up to conflict.  But first I
> decided to edit the BIOS setting and I set IRQ5 to ISA/EISA instead of
> PCI/PNP.  I left DMA's on auto.  I could have set DMA1 to ISA/EISA too.
> 
> In order to make AWE work in DOS (and then in linux - DOS presets things
> properly on the pnp card) I run ctcm, and set IRQ to 5 that way.  First I
> had to run ctcu (or edit a .cfg file manually) to choose the desired IRQ,
> address, and dmas, and I also disabled the IDE controller on the card and
> the gameport.
> 
> The dvd-rom drive accesses a Win95 CD in DOS after about 10 seconds.  (I
> did not time it before changing BIOS).  In linux it is now instant!
> 
> I am posting this for other users of obsolete ISA sound cards in
> overcrowded computers.  I also have ISA modem (pnp) for which I have not
> set the IRQ in BIOS, but might try that too to see if dialing speeds up.
> 
> Now that I have the sound card working with AWE, I tried loading a 3.5MB
> .sf2 sound bank instead of the 35K default synthgm.sbk, but all the wind
> instruments STILL sound like piano or harpsichord or organ.  At least the
> piano midis sound better than with FM synthesis.  Time to do more reading
> about linux and AWE.  Keyboard pieces sound pretty good.
> 
> David pointed out that the BL kernels were set to recognize BIOS settings
> - why?  This may be what caused the problem.  They were configured to ANY.
> 
> keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
> SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
> _______________________________________________
> BasLinux mailing list
> BasLinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux
> 


-- 
--sam
http://mephitus.renamon.org/
"When you've done something right, no one will be sure you've done
anything at all." -- Futurama
--