Rev. Ferret wrote:
Hi, I'm having problems getting my sound blaster 16 working. I used modconf to select the sb module, which in turn selected a bunch of the oss modules. After doing this, I can play audio cd's, but whenever I try to run gmix it tells me that I do not have a mixer installed or my kernel doesn't support sound. When I run XMMS, it tells me my kernel either doesn't support sound or my card is not configured correctly. I figured my kernel supports sound because I can load sound modules and play audio cd's, so something else must be wrong. What else do I have to do to get sound to work under debian? Thanks, Steve
I'm no expert, so if you have any further questions, reply to all, not just to me, so that the list members can throw in their two cents.
(1) You need to have support in your kernel for your sound card. There are two methods of doing this; one is to compile it in; the other is to plug it in as a module. Your description indicates that you're using the module method.
(2) Playing an audio CD doesn't really depend on the software sound support; most CD drives will start spinning as soon as you put in a CD, and the sound from an audio CD is piped through the audio cable directly to the sound card. What a broken software setup will do is prevent you from using apps to control tracks, volume, etc. About the only thing playing an audio CD proves is that the hardware is functional (which is a good thing to know); it also points strongly to a lack of IRQ conflict (although not necessarily).
(3) When you boot up, you should see some info scroll by concerning your sound card. But generally it goes by too fast to see, and you can see it after the fact by running "dmesg|more".
(4) You should be able to see if you card is recognized, and on which IRQ, by running "cat /proc/interrupts" (my card is on IRQ 5 and 9).
(5) Ditto for IO by running "cat /proc/ioports" (my card's on 220-2FF and 330-3FF).
(6) You can see what modules are loaded by running "lsmod" (I've got "soundcore", "sound", "uart401", and "sb").
(7) I'm not sure what "cat /proc/devices" indicates, but it lists my sound card, so it might be relevant.
(8) Perhaps the most informative command is "cat /dev/sndstat", which on my machine reports:
OSS/Free:3.8s2++-971130 Load type: Driver loaded as a module Kernel: Linux westk03 2.2.18 #2 Thu Jan 18 22:52:14 CST 2001 i586 Config options: 0 Installed drivers: Card config: Audio devices: 0: Sound Blaster Pro (8 BIT ONLY) (3.02) Synth devices: Midi devices: 0: MPU-401 (UART) MIDI 1: Sound Blaster Timers: 0: System clock Mixers: 0: Sound BlasterPerhaps this info will get you a bit further on your quest to get your card working. Good luck!
Kent