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Re: Configuring sound?



Steve,

Well, there is a lot about sound. 
The best thing is to start with HOWTOs:
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Sound-HOWTO.html

Briefly, here is what you need to have/know to get it working:
- linux kernel needs to have sound support compiled in. To my knowledge
Debian stock kernels don't come with it. You need to build your own
kernel with sound support and a proper driver. Read on ...
- you need to find out what sound card your laptop has. Don't assume
it's 'SB compatible', despite the fact you use 'SB' driver on Windows.
On Linux you will usually get poor quality ( 8 bit ) sound. There are
actually few cards not containing SB chipsets, which are compatible
enough to use SB driver. Linux kernels sources come with a large
selection of OSS/Free sound drivers. Check
http://www.opensound.com/ossfree.
If you don't find your card there, compile sound support into the kernel
and use one of the ALSA modules ( available as Debian package )
- once you have a kernel with the right driver you may need to load
them. One good way to do it is via modprobe:
put your driver module along with sound support ( when compiled as a
module ) int /etc/modules. Here is mine:
sound	# core sound support
nm256	# Neomagic 256 ZX sound driver
You may need to supply driver parametrs when loading - IOport, req#. In
that case create a file called sound in etc/modutils and run
update-modules as a root - this will append this information into
/etc/modules.conf. Options are specific to a driver you use. Here is my
/etc/modutils/sound:
options nm256 buffertop=0x252800

I hope at least pointed in the right direction ...

Jacek

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