[CLUE-Tech] sound card config

[David Anselmi]

Randy Arabie wrote:
> I've never actually configured a sound card on linux...but am trying now.
> 
> I've got a Sound Blaster PCI 128.  I compiled sound support into my kernel, 
> the ES1371.

You mentioned compiling a kernel before.  Why did you do that?  Debian's 
kernel packages seem pretty good to me, and you can build any wierd 
modules you want without compiling the kernel.  The advantages of a 
custom kernel seem small to me, and outweighed by the ease of upgrading 
using the kernel packages.  Not trying to start a religious discussion, 
just curious about your reasons.

> dmesg shows this info on the driver:
> 
> es1371: version v0.30 time 16:20:09 Oct 20 2002
> 
> But that is it, nothing about the card.
> 
> I thought that was all I would need to do, but so far I've got no sound.
> 
> Looking at some debian doco, and plowing through google groups, it seems I
> should be able to find info on my config in /proc/sound.  But, I have no 
> /proc/sound.
> 
> Looking in /proc/ioports I do find this:
> 
> cc00-cc3f : Ensoniq ES1370 [AudioPCI]

So you probably want the 1370 driver rather than the 1371 (see, now you 
get to recompile rather than just changing out modules).

> 
> But, looking in /proc/interrupts, there is no entry for my sound card.
> 
> Here is what happens when I try to cat an audio file to /dev/audio:
> 
> potter:~# ls -l /dev/audio
> crw-rw----    1 root     audio     14,   4 Mar 14  2002 /dev/audio
> potter:~# cat /usr/share/xfce/sounds/alert01.wav > /dev/audio
> su: /dev/audio: No such device

That means you have the wrong driver.  Making things work the way you 
want after you get the right driver might not be trivial.  I've yet to 
tweak KDE's artsd and the emu10k driver sufficiently.  The alsa sound 
drivers seem much nicer to me, but aren't part of the 2.4 kernel yet.

Dave