ALSA don't recognize some ISA legacy card on Puppy 3.0

[redrat]

I'm a Linux newbie. I've installed Puppy 2,16 on my old Compaq armada 1500c and it works very fine. Yesterday I've tried the 3.0 liveCD thinking to upgrade the system, but a problem is occurred. During the ALSA wizard configuration after the start of the legacy ISA sound card wizard (I've a ES18XX) ALSA find as good the op13sa2 and don't recognize any other option. I've tried to upgrade the library of ALSA wizard as explained in some topics, but don't work. Someone may help me?
Alberto- Italy

[HairyWill]

I installed 3.00 on an armada 1530d last week.
I'm not certain but I suspect that the alsa wizard might have a problem. I got it to use es18xx by ensuring that it was the only isa driver I allowed it to scan for. You can do this by cursoring up and down the list and unchecking the other drivers with the space bar.

I wonder if alsa is just trying to load the first driver in the list.

[DemertX]

I have a similar problem,my Opti16 Isa card work,but the driver isnt loaded at startup,so i must run modprobe each time(redrat try some of this steps,may work for you)

1 Imputting in the terminal the command modprobe snd-opti93x the driver is loaded and working
but it isn't loaded at puppy boot,so i have to reload it each time.

2 Adding these lines to /etc/modules.conf under ALSA
# ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-opti93x
alias sound-slot-0 snd-opti93x
options snd-opti93x irq=10 dma8=1 dma16=3

ps.irq data is taken from puppy hardware information prog

the driver is still not loaded at startup

3 Trying adding the same lines in modprobe.conf make the command modprobe snd-opti93x not working

Help?

[redrat]

I've tried your suggestion but unfortunely don't work for me. ALSA configuration wizard is the same version (1.0. present in Puppy 2.16, why in 2.16 works and in 3.0 not? Any other idea?
Many thanks to all.
Alberto - Italy

[Sage]

Best to stick with genuine SB ISA cards - both SB8 & 16 work just fine, but ESS and Opti can be problematic in 'doze, too. The advantage of ISA cards is that they often have audio driving output chips giving far superior quality. If you haven't got a spare SB card, look in your nearest roadside skip. Not so much two-a-penny, more they'll pay you to take them away.
Quite a few SktA boards still around with the last ISA slot onboard. Treasure them! Slot1 boards usually have ISA slots, too, and work reasonably well with Puppy.

[Bruce B]

Best to stick with genuine SB ISA cards - both SB8 & 16 work just fine, but ESS and Opti can be problematic in 'doze, too. The advantage of ISA cards is that they often have audio driving output chips giving far superior quality. If you haven't got a spare SB card, look in your nearest roadside skip. Not so much two-a-penny, more they'll pay you to take them away.

Quite a few SktA boards still around with the last ISA slot onboard. Treasure them! Slot1 boards usually have ISA slots, too, and work reasonably well with Puppy.

I can hardly remember how many Sound Blaster 16 ISA cards I almost threw away, but never did.

On the other hand, I think most any Creative Labs sound cards are easily supported by most Linux.

True or False?

[DemertX]

Best to stick with genuine SB ISA cards - both SB8 & 16 work just fine, but ESS and Opti can be problematic in 'doze, too. The advantage of ISA cards is that they often have audio driving output chips giving far superior quality. If you haven't got a spare SB card, look in your nearest roadside skip. Not so much two-a-penny, more they'll pay you to take them away.
Quite a few SktA boards still around with the last ISA slot onboard. Treasure them! Slot1 boards usually have ISA slots, too, and work reasonably well with Puppy.

It's a bit easy saying to use another ISA card as the SBs instead of the Opti16 ..it's problematic ok..but we have to understand why and how fix these problems..
I think that i have to edit some confing file to make Puppy 3.0 loading the opti93x driver at startup,editing modules.conf doesn't work,perhaps i could try editing rc.local that is a file where user commands are ran at startup (as the system firewall) but i dont know wich lines i have to add...

[Sage]

In principle, what you say is correct. However, this is an old problem of proprietary hardware for which complete specifications never were released. [Incidentally, this also applies to SB - Creative, but we've established that they work - probably because they adhered to agreed standards with no corner-cutting? Remind you of the antics of a certain company?!].
I still have an ESS card that I never managed to get working with 'doze using the drivers supplied. Another one sat in my box for years because the W98 driver wouldn't work - by accident, one day I tried to install it with a W95 driver. Guess!
Opti's were generally more predictable, but not all.
No reason to expect these units to behave any more predictably with Linux - that's the point. Methinks only reverse engineering would supply the necessary information in some cases.
Rarely, it's expedient to give up and go with the flow, especially if the solution might be free gratis and available by the bucketload.

[Bruce B]

I don't have a sound card like yours to play with, and there is little I can do, but I'll try and do a little.

The drivers are NOT a part of Puppy's file system. They are part of the zdrv_xxx.sfs archive. Buried under /lib/modules/2.6.####/kernel/sound/isa/opti9xx

I don't know when this archive gets joined with the filesystem in relation to when the sound card gets probed and setup. If it were me I'd want to put the driver in the basic filesystem.

Depends are:

snd
snd-opl3-lib
snd-pcm
snd-mpu401-uart

Maybe: snd-card-opti93x

Author is: Massimo Piccioni

< dafastidio at ibero.it >

HOWTO

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Alsa-sound-5.html

Don't forget to check the * link for more instructions on the same page.

[Sage]

Barry has just indicated, on his news blog, that the zdrv file is not being mounted properly, so you're in with a chance.

[redrat]

If I well understood if the zdrv module is not correctly mounted in puppy 3.0 we have to hope in a patch to correct the problem isn't it ?
But now I'we another problem. It's not possible to reboot or shut off the system from live cd because it hanging when the screen say "Please wait Puppy is going down". Help?
Alberto-Italy

[Sage]

Shutdown issues are a feature of Puppy. Provided you get past the the 'Save File' stage, if you are saving anything, there are two possible philosophies:

Press the Reset or Power Off button
or

Insert acpi=force/on/off as a boot parameter or in /etc/rc.d/rc.local and see which one works. A BIOS adjustment of acpi may also be required?
Most other distros have cracked this issue, but not all.

[DemertX]

I don't have a sound card like yours to play with, and there is little I can do, but I'll try and do a little.

The drivers are NOT a part of Puppy's file system. They are part of the zdrv_xxx.sfs archive. Buried under /lib/modules/2.6.####/kernel/sound/isa/opti9xx

I don't know when this archive gets joined with the filesystem in relation to when the sound card gets probed and setup. If it were me I'd want to put the driver in the basic filesystem.

Depends are:

snd
snd-opl3-lib
snd-pcm
snd-mpu401-uart

Maybe: snd-card-opti93x

Author is: Massimo Piccioni

< dafastidio at ibero.it >

HOWTO

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Alsa-sound-5.html

Don't forget to check the * link for more instructions on the same page.

Yes,the right driver is the opti93x,but i already know that.I looked at the link but there's nothing new,maybe that the zdrv file should be patched..I dont think this is a big issue,because the opti93x is loaded well with modprobe,should be easy for developer fixing the startup i think.

[redrat]

I've tried to insert the acpi=force/on/off command line on etc/rc.d/local file, but don't work. Where do I insert the command to modify the boot parameters? I apologize for my ignorance but I'm a really newbie of Linux.
Thanks
Alberto-Italy

[linuxcbon]

I got same problem on old laptop ?
With 2.17 it worked very good.
In 3.0 not worked : with ALSA sound Wizard : it searches for sound cards. no PnP or PCI card found, thats normal. Then :

Code: Select all

probes ISA cards.
starting snd-opl3sa2
/usr/sbin/alsactl no sound card found
amixer mixer attach default

in /etc/modprob.conf I got :

Code: Select all

# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF verion 1.0.8 ---
alias snd-card-0 snd-opl3sa2
alias sound-slot-0 snd-opl3sa2
options snd-opl3sa2 fm_port=-1 midi_port=-1 port=0x370 wss_port=0x530 isapnp=0 dma1=1 dma2=0 irq=5
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---

[Kosh]

Haha, yes, soundcards... always a source of fun (together with modems; I had the same problems in the days of Suse 6 when ALSA was still brand-spanking new).
My old PII/333 happens to have an AWE32, which of course is not recognized, either. But I can pretend it's an SB16. In 2.17. the wizard would not even let me do this, but the one in 3.00 it does. The sound test then didn't produce any sound though (and yes, the speakers were on). But maybe I just need to give it another try, that seems to do the trick for this box.

I also found it helped to unselect everything but the SB16 detection.

[redrat]

I've installed Puppy 3.0 on HD (leaving the livecd booting) and in the ALSA wizard of the ISA card I've unchecked all the drivers (as HairyWill says) leaving only the Sb8, then all works correctly.
About the shutting down problem I've controlled my BIOS settings (I apologize with Sage for the mismatch in thread) but the acpi is switched on and the command line acpi=force or acpi=on don't works in menu lst file in /boot/grub directory . Is it possible that I'ven't understood the correct location ? It is possible for me to shut off the computer with power key but every time I've to type xwin in the command line at boot, I don't know if this may do problems at the system if usually used.
Many thanks for any help.
Alberto-Italy