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

I had to remove the network card to put in an internal modem (no free 
slots) so spent two hours identifying onboard sound to free up another 
slot.

No name on the board that I can see.  I copied the numbers off the 
northbridge (VIA VT82C694T) near the cpu and the southbridge (VIA 
VT82C686B).  It was hard to read upside down under the desk but is NOT 
6868 or 68CB as other people read it.

I then spent an hour trying to identify the motherboard by these numbers 
and "1 ISA" "5 PCI" "2 COM" "3 DIMM".  No luck.

Searched on the chip numbers and audio and  it is via686 audio controlled 
by the southbridge chip (similarly to the i810).

99% of the online info for this sound is for ALSA, which gave people a lot
of trouble due to conflicts with ethernet card.  The chip is found in some 
laptops.

OSS module is via82cxxx_audio.o and it compiled with a 'make modules' 
after I changed the two related lines to m instead of 'is not set'.  make 
menuconfig saves having to go through the whole thing.

make config (or make menuconfig)
make dep
(DO NOT make clean)
make modules - it only made this one module but took a while looking at the
                others  - is there a better way to make one module?

Instructions said to insmod soundcore and ac97_codec first.  What it 
really needed was:

soundcore
sound
uart401
ac97_codec
via82cxxx_audio

There is supposed to be some midi support included.

Like the i810, it supports only 48KHz so play does not work, nor does 
mpg123 (No supported rate found!).  The files are 44KHz and 32KHz.

Timidity and mplayer (online for a few minutes, at 44K) work.  Sounds 
okay, and plenty loud enough with powered speakers.  I will leave it 
enabled (without SB-PRO legacy sound support, which did not work in DOS or 
linux) and think about whether to put back the ethernet card or leave the 
SB-LIVE in there (which sounds better).

Timidity says 'audio buffer is too small'.  But works perfectly.

No more tripping over the external modem.  ;=) !!!!!!

The next computer has onboard CMI8738 which compiled but has unresolved 
symbols.

Radio slows down email a lot.

Sindi



keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org