Prev: Upgrade motherboard & processor
Next: Dillo question
From: J G Miller on 18 Jan 2010 10:11
On Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:34:51 -0600, Ohmster wrote:
> I want to use this Soundblaster AWE64 card and I installed awesfx but
> the system is not seeing any sound hardware

Do you have the kernel modules loaded to access this ISA card.

You need to look at the output of dmesg to see if there are any
references to the card and also the output of lsmod to see if
there are any snd module loaded.

If there are none, then neither awesfx nor any of the other
ALSA tools are going to seen the card no matter how good your
configuration of the kernel aliases.

With no relevant modules loaded, when you load a kernel module
specific to your hardware, you will see a line added to dmesg
that not only says that the module is loaded but and indication
that it is associated with the hardware, for example with the
ICE1724 sound module --

[ 18.704414] ICE1724 0000:00:0d.0: enabling device (0004 -> 0005)
[ 18.704438] ICE1724 0000:00:0d.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKD] -> GSI 5
(level, low) -

So is the sbawe kernel module loaded and does it indicate that it has
found the hardware?

For more information about sbawe see

<http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Module-sbawe>

Just as important is -- have you loaded the necessary kernel modules
to support the ISA interface so that the system can see the ISA bus,
otherwise the ALSA kernel module will never find the sound card?

Recall that RedHat (pre-Fedora) Linux dropped support for ISA sound
cards, so I do wonder if Fedora ever put the support back in, and
think it highly unlikely.
From: John S on 26 Jan 2010 18:17
On 01/17/2010 06:07 AM, Ohmster wrote:
> I tested out Fedora 12 with the live CD and I like it, but it did not
> detect my sound card. I am now installing FC12 from the DVD and want to
> know if this card will work with fedora and what do I have to do to get it
> recognized by the system with the sound bank for midi if possible. The card
> is a Soundblaster AWE64 Gold ISA going into an Intel Pentium III machine
> with an Nvidia card in an AGP slot.
>
> Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Yes you can! I have a very similar system which I have just installed.
The motherboard is plug and play, all IRQs etc are set to auto.

In Fedora 12 I installed the Alsa sound mixer. At first when the system
rebooted the sound card was not recognised. I opened a terminal and su,
then run:

modprobe snd-sbawe

This gave no errors, and installed the kernel module (type modinfo
snd-sbawe for more information). I didn't have to configure any IRQ or
I/O ports, due to well behaved PnP (and some good luck!).

I then added the line

modprobe snd-sbawe

to the end of /etc/rc.local (I tried to configure /etc/modprobe.d but
failed to get anywhere).


Lastly I also installed the Gnome sound mixer. Current problem is sound
levels are turned down low, I have to increase level on PCM and Playback
sliders to hear any output.

My PC now has basic sound capabilities, hopefully someone else can
advise about getting more AWE64 features working.

Regards,
John
First  |  Prev  | 
Pages: 1 2 3 4
Prev: Upgrade motherboard & processor
Next: Dillo question