Re: Setting up a Soundblaster card

[Philipp Lehman <lehman@gmx.net>]

On Fri, 20 Oct 2000, Casey Henderson <Casey@umit.maine.edu> wrote:

>So now I'm totally confused as to how to set up my card in Linux.  I ran
>sndconfig but when I go to set the resource settings, I can't seem to
>get the right combination.  It doesn't even list FF00h as one of the I/O
>port addresses as an option.  I'm guessing I'm going to have to manually
>configure the card.  Can somebody help me out by telling me what modules
>I need to load, and what config files I need to modify, and what lines I
>need to add? I've never had to manually configure a sound card before.
> Just as a side note, when I used Redhat 6.2, I ran sndconfig and chose
>the es1371 sound module and the card worked without me even having to
>configure anything (I sort of stumbled on this by accident -- I just
>tried different cards until I found one that worked).  If somebody could
>help me out with this it would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

First, you should recompile the kernel and build sound as
modules. You basically need

	CONFIG_SOUND
	CONFIG_SOUND_OSS
	CONFIG_SOUND_SB

and maybe

	CONFIG_SOUND_YM3812

Note that you see the names of the config options by default only
when running 'make config'. If you prefer 'make menuconfig' (like
I do), you need to look up the short help text for each option by
pressing '?' and watch the upper left hand corner.

Your configuration should look like this:

<M> Sound card support
<M> OSS sound modules
<M> 100% Sound Blaster compatibles (SB16/32/64, ESS, Jazz16) support
<M> FM synthesizer (YM3812/OPL-3) support

Then install the modutils package and put the resources in some
file under /etc/modutils/. This is my /etc/modutils/options:

options sound dmabuf=1
options sb esstype=1868 io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 dma16=-1
options mpu401 io=0x330
options opl3 io=0x388

It's for an ISA based Soundblaster clone (the ESS 1868). For
instructions on these options see the kernel docs in
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/sound.

Finally run "update-modules" and then load the modules:

modprobe sb
modprobe opl3

If it works, put the names of the modules in /etc/modules, one
per line. They will be loaded whenever you boot the system.

-- 
Philipp Lehman <lehman@gmx.net>