How do I get linux to see that I have a soundcard?

[imphasing]

Okay, I'm using slackware 9.1, and I only have disk one installed. Not a problem for me, but there are a few non-critical programs that are on disk two, so I'm downloading it now. When I try to run xmms, or any other audio program, it doesn't know that I have a soundcard. How do I "mount" my sound card, so it recognizes it?

Thanks!
Alex

[bandwidth_pig]

Hi Alex. There is a chance that Slackware does indeed see your soundcard already. What I would do in your situation is:

1. run dmesg as root and scan to see what devices are detected.

2. Have you tried using xmms as root? You may want to give that a try and see if you get sound that way. If you do, it's a permissions problem and it is easy to fix.

What kind of sound card do you have?

[JamminJoeyB]

Well slackware should have spotted it when you booted.

A common reason for linux not to see a sound card is having PNP OS enabled in your mother boards bios. Disable PNP in the bios and that should help.

Also to find out if you have audio modules loaded use the following command

lsmod | grep snd

bash-2.05b$ lsmod | grep snd
snd-pcm-oss 37252 0
snd-mixer-oss 11992 2 [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-emu10k1 60212 2
snd-pcm 55904 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-emu10k1]
snd-timer 13252 0 [snd-pcm]
snd-hwdep 4672 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-util-mem 1136 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-page-alloc 6004 0 [snd-emu10k1 snd-pcm]
snd-rawmidi 12512 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-seq-device 3920 0 [snd-emu10k1 snd-rawmidi]
snd-ac97-codec 37240 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd 27460 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-emu10k1 snd-pcm snd-timer snd-hwdep snd-util-mem snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-ac97-codec]
soundcore 3332 8 [snd]
bash-2.05b$


As you can see by my output I had a creative card taht uses the emu10k1 module.

Slackware 9.1 uses ALSA so if you have modules loaded with a snd prefix then you just need to unmute.

Do you know what kind of sound card you have or are you using onboard. It helps to know these things.

Also there are a lot of threads on here about getting sound working. If you know your sound card then try a search here as most of the more popular cards and onboard sound are covered well in the forums.

[imphasing]

Okay, I tried all the things, and "lsmod | grep snd" didn't do anything, and "dmesg" did't show anything for sound. I really have no idea what kind of card I have...the computer is an IBM 365x laptop though, so I'll find out somewhere...what do I do once I find the type of soundcard? it's definitly not PnP.

Thanks,
Alex

[imphasing]

Okay, so I can't find the soundcard...but it says that the chip is an "ESS AudioDrove sound chip" Does that help at all?

Thanks,
Alex

[psi42]

Originally posted by imphasing
Okay, so I can't find the soundcard...but it says that the chip is an "ESS AudioDrove sound chip" Does that help at all?

Thanks,
Alex

Take a look at the output of lspci -v... see if that helps

There are a bunch of modules named snd-es* that you should try loading. Have fun.

I have an ESS 1869 integrated chip. I believe it works along the lines of ISA (doesn't show up as a PCI device). I am using the "sb" OSS module for that thing.

modprobe sb

~psi42

[mdwatts]

From the kernel source documentation for ESS and ESS1868.


Documentation for the ESS AudioDrive chips

In 2.4 kernels the SoundBlaster driver not only tries to detect an ESS chip, it
tries to detect the type of ESS chip too. The correct detection of the chip
doesn't always succeed however, so unless you use the kernel isapnp facilities
(and you chip is pnp capable) the default behaviour is 2.0 behaviour which
means: only detect ES688 and ES1688.

All ESS chips now have a recording level setting. This is a need-to-have for
people who want to use their ESS for recording sound.

Every chip that's detected as a later-than-es1688 chip has a 6 bits logarithmic
master volume control.

Every chip that's detected as a ES1887 now has Full Duplex support. Made a
little testprogram that shows that is works, haven't seen a real program that
needs this however.

For ESS chips an additional parameter "esstype" can be specified. This controls
the (auto) detection of the ESS chips. It can have 3 kinds of values:

-1 Act like 2.0 kernels: only detect ES688 or ES1688.
0 Try to auto-detect the chip (may fail for ES1688)
688 The chip will be treated as ES688
1688 ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ES1688
1868 ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ES1868
1869 ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ES1869
1788 ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ES1788
1887 ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ES1887
1888 ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ES1888

Because Full Duplex is supported for ES1887 you can specify a second DMA
channel by specifying module parameter dma16. It can be one of: 0, 1, 3 or 5.

Documentation for the ESS1868F AudioDrive PnP sound card

The ESS1868 sound card is a PnP ESS1688-compatible 16-bit sound card.

It should be automatically detected by the Linux Kernel isapnp support when you
load the sb.o module. Otherwise you should take care of:

* The ESS1868 does not allow use of a 16-bit DMA, thus DMA 0, 1, 2, and 3
may only be used.

* isapnptools version 1.14 does work with ESS1868. Earlier versions might
not.

* Sound support MUST be compiled as MODULES, not statically linked
into the kernel.


NOTE: this is only needed when not using the kernel isapnp support!

For configuring the sound card's I/O addresses, IRQ and DMA, here is a
sample copy of the isapnp.conf directives regarding the ESS1868:

(CONFIGURE ESS1868/-1 (LD 1
(IO 0 (BASE 0x0220))
(IO 1 (BASE 0x0388))
(IO 2 (BASE 0x0330))
(DMA 0 (CHANNEL 1))
(INT 0 (IRQ 5 (MODE +E)))
(ACT Y)
))

(for a full working isapnp.conf file, remember the
(ISOLATE)
(IDENTIFY *)
at the beginning and the
(WAITFORKEY)
at the end.)

In this setup, the main card I/O is 0x0220, FM synthesizer is 0x0388, and
the MPU-401 MIDI port is located at 0x0330. IRQ is IRQ 5, DMA is channel 1.

After configuring the sound card via isapnp, to use the card you must load
the sound modules with the proper I/O information. Here is my setup:

# ESS1868F AudioDrive initialization

/sbin/modprobe sound
/sbin/insmod uart401
/sbin/insmod sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 dma16=-1
/sbin/insmod mpu401 io=0x330
/sbin/insmod opl3 io=0x388
/sbin/insmod v_midi

opl3 is the FM synthesizer
/sbin/insmod opl3 io=0x388