tomek.fizyk@op.pl wrote:
Hi. You wrote that you have no problems with your MB with nForce3. I have 2 questions. I have also a MB with nForce3 and have some problems with the intel8x0 sound driver. (My MB is AsRock K8Upgrade-NF3). My chipset's full name is nForce 3 250. The snd_intel8x0 does not see the MIDI device. I know that the sound chip in the nForce3 250 has the MIDI support - when I used windows some time ago the MIDI worked and it was not any MIDI emultion but true MIDI device was detected by the drivers. So is is because the snd_intel8x0 does not support MIDI (do you have MIDI in support your system)?
Sorry, but you're wrong here - basic AC97 codecs like the Realtek your board probably uses has no real MIDI support.
Just because it's shown in Windows, doesn't mean it isn't emulated - and emulating MIDI in Linux is a chore (but possible, try reading the FAQ on scummvm.org).
The second problem is related to Debian AMD64 only - the problem was not present on Debian i386 (do you use the Debian AMD64?). The sound driver can be used only by one app at a time (for example when I listen to music with xmms the KDE has no access to the sound device; or when KDE uses the sound device (through aRts) no other app has access to the sound device, etc). One of the apps ran in console printed an error msg saying that there is no /dev/dsp-1 device. I would like to know if these are general problems or if only I have them. Tomek
Again, you're wrong here. When accessing sound cards via OSS (/dev/dsp*), only cards with hardware mixing support can accept multiple sounds at once - regardless of architecture. The exception here is the closed-source "nvsound" driver for use with NForce motherboards, which emulates hardware support. At any rate, with the basic snd-intel8x0 driver, you cannot have multiple calls to /dev/dsp* devices. However, via the newer ALSA devices (which you never address directly, but technically live in /dev/snd/), it is possible to use software mixing support, via a mechanism called "DMIX". On older versions of ALSA (e.g. that included with Debian Stable), you need to configure DMIX by hand.