Soundcard Problems

[bass2496]

I'm very new to Linux, and I am having major problems configuring my soundcard.

I have an ES1869, and the ISA PnP does not detect it. I am completely clueless on the subject and was hoping that someone here can help.

[bass2496]

I'm using Slackware 8.1

[mdwatts]

Do you have PnP OS disabled in the bios? Try that first.

[bass2496]

It is probably enabled, because PnP works in Windows, but I am not sure how to get into BIOS...I really am a newbie when it comes to this stuff.

[bass2496]

I got into the BIOS, but it didn't say anything about PnP. There was an option that asked what OS I was using. I guess I'll try "Other OS" and see if that works.

[bass2496]

Well, I tried that and it still wasn't recognized.

Now I'm completely clueless as to what to do. I tried recompiling the kernel with OSS and SoundBlaster support, and I tried installing ALSA, but neither worked because it couldn't recognize my device. I went back to my original kernel when the new one didn't make a difference.

I found this: http://www.marko.net/asterisk/archives/0004/0082.html

He even has the same computer as the one I have Linux on (Compaq Presario 5030).

I wonder what the difference is in my configuration.

I hope someone else has some ideas, because I am fresh out.

(Oh yeah, some more info...right when I installed I was experimenting with stuff I read on the net and typed "modprobe sb" then sound would play, but it was very choppy. Now, after doing all of the above, "modprobe sb" doesn't work anymore. Did I screw things up? I wish I knew more about this kind of stuff. Thanks for the help so far, though.)

[mdwatts]

See if these search results for "es1869 presario" (http://www.google.com/linux?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=es1869+presario) help.

Does

lsmod

show any sound modules as being loaded?

[mrBen]

For sound support in Slackware, normally you just need to un-comment the relevant module line in the file-whose-name-I-can't-remember (think it's in /etc/rc.d somewhere) and then it should work.

[bass2496]

I've been through google.com/linux searches all weekend, that's how I've got the information I have.

lsmod shows no sound modules.

I completely forgot about rc.modules, I should've looked through that earlier. It directed me to /usr/src/linux/Documentation/sound, which has configuration details for the ES1868, which in Windows actually uses the same driver as the ES1869, but it uses the same sb module that doesn't work anymore. Could it be that the ALSA drivers I installed changed something so that I can't load the sb module anymore? Is it possible that sb was the correct module for me to use, but the reason it was choppy was because it wasn't configured properly?

I really don't know, but I have a feeling that if I uninstalled the ALSA drivers, then I could get things to work with the sb module and the config in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/sound. Which brings me to another question: How does one go about uninstalling things in Linux?

[mdwatts]

Compiled from source?

If you still have the source directory, then 'make uninstall' sometimes works.

[bass2496]

I uninstalled it, but nothing changed. I also went through the method that ALSA provided to get rd of their modules.

When I try to load the sb module, I get "unresolved symbol" errors in reference to sb_dsp_init, sb_dsp_detect, and several others. Maybe if I found out what was causing those errors, I could fix my problem.

Thanks for all the help so far, guys, you are being very patient with me.

[bass2496]

It's fixed. The problem was that when I recompiled the kernel, I compiled the sb drivers into the kernel, so it didn't accept the module, then I switched back to the kernel that didn't have it compiled in. I built a new kernel, installed the modules, and used the configuration for the ES1868, and now my card works perfectly. Thanks for all the help, guys.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to configure lpc and samba to use the printer on my WinXP Box...