Re: alsa drivers and slab
On Thu, Feb 11, 1999 at 01:03:40PM +0100, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> Yes, I am very interested but did not know the answer to your problem. I did
> never manage to get Slab working with OSSFree and the old kernels 2.0.3x
> not even without any duplex (half, full).
It's all about the ALSA drivers :) I was afraid to use them at first,
but I figured I couldn't go wrong.
> I have a AWE 64 Value Ed. set up with the aweutils.
> Could you please tell me (and all on the list) what you did to get Slab
> running. What version of Slab did you use? What kernel version?
> As I said, I would really like to hear more...
I'm running kernel version 2.2.1; I configured sound as a module in
the kernel config, set my /etc/conf.modules correctly, and had
OSS/Free (= stock kernel drivers) working fine for everything EXCEPT
SLab. (I actually froze my machine _completely_ trying to use SLab
with the stock kernel drivers.)
So then I turned to ALSA. I did NOT use the Debian package, but just
the plain tar.gz file from the ALSA website:
alsa-driver-0.2.0-pre10p2.tar.gz. Shortly after I got that working,
they released a new version of the ALSA driver:
alsa-driver-0.3.0-pre3.tar.gz; I also got this working.
With the alsa-driver-0.3 version, P'n'P support is included as a
MODULE -- it negates the need for isapnp. But, since I already had
isapnp running and working at start up, I configured alsa to *not* use
its own pnp module (and you must explicity state this when running
configure, because it defaults to "yes" for using the pnp module. If
you try to use ALSA's pnp module and the standalone isapnp program,
the sound will not work at all (at least in my case).). To be more
concise, I simply installed ALSA as instructed in the INSTALL file
that comes with the alsa tarball. Another quick aside: when you run
the "snddevices" script that comes with the ALSA distribution, it
changes the owner of the various audio devices to user root and group
root. "Normal" users will not be able to use the audio devices,
unless you change permissions, or ownership. I simply changed the
group to "audio" and added myself to the "audio" group.
For the slab version, I just got the following tarball:
slab-3.0-1b.tar.gz. The default scripts have slab setup in /usr/slab,
but I just installed in my home directory. Naturally, I had to modify
the startup scripts (there is a bash startup script and a csh startup
script; you can use either). An important point is to make sure that
Slab does the "xrdb -merge $SLAB_HOME/.Xresources" or Slab will not
work correctly.
The first time SLab is run, it will ask you to config your soundcard.
If you have only one soundcard, and have it working properly with
ALSA, then you need only configure "Audio Device 1 (main output) and
Mixer." In the first field, I simply put "/dev/dsp" and for the
second field, I have "/dev/mixer" and I indicated "Full Duplex" by
clicking on the "Full Duplex" button. (According to the SLab
documentation, you may have multiple audio devices; I don't know how
hard this would be, but my roommate it getting a new soundcard, and I
might buy his old SB16 just to try using multiple devices.)
As far as the actual recording, it's a bit tricky to describe. Once
you have the sound devices configured correctly, the built-in "Help"
documentation is actually fairly useful. Check out the topic called
"recording," in particular. If you play with this software enough,
you can achieve impressive results. Using only my ultra cheap
microphone that came with my soundcard (sitting it in front of my
guitar amp), I can record very clear sound.
If anyone needs any more details on setting up ALSA and SLab, feel
free to ask. I'm still in "awe" that I got the stuff to work :)
Matt
--
Matt Garman, garman@uiuc.edu
"They're always havin' a good time down on the bayou,
Lord, them delta women think the world of me."
-- Dickey Betts, "Ramblin' Man"
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