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Re: Detecting onboard CMI8738 sound chip



On Tue, Jul 09, 2002 at 11:36:57 +1200, Gib Bogle wrote:
> I have an ASUS P4B266-M which has an onboard sound chip, the CMI8738
> from C-Media.  I have built the 2.4.18 kernel with support for this
> chip, but the sound system is dead as a dodo, although it works fine
> with W2000.  A starting point for debugging is bootup detection
> messages.  I don't see anything in the boot log that looks like having
> anything to do with detection of the chip, although there is a line
> about the driver:
> 
> cmpci: version $Revision: 5.64 $ time 02:41:23 Jul 9 2002
> 
> (this is followed by
> 
> es1371: version v0.30 time 00:42:56 Jul 9 2002
> 
> which I think just means that I built in ES1371 support by mistake.)
> 
> I'm sure there are plenty of people using a m/b from ASUS or some other
> manufacturer that has an onboard CMI8738, so maybe someone can tell me
> what they see in the boot log to indicate detection of the chip.
>
I have an ASUS CUSI-FX SiS Socket 370 FlexATX Motherboard.  IT has a
Cmedia CMI8738 audio controller.

I did not have any real problems getting the thing to work.  I compiled
my kernel with Sound as a module though.

Here is part of the Sound section in kernel config file
CONFIG_SOUND=m
CONFIG_SOUND_CMPCI=m
CONFIG_SOUND_CMPCI_CM8738=y
CONFIG_SOUND_CMPCI_SPEAKERS=2
All others in this section are not set.

If you compile as a module, you can modprobe cmpci and see if it loads
OK.  lsmod should show something like:
cmpci                  24900   0  (unused)
soundcore               3556   2  [cmpci]

Then make sure permissions are OK on the sound devices.  I use devfs so
my devices are as follows:
$ ls -al /dev/sound
total 0
drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan  1  1970 .
drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan  1  1970 ..
crw-rw----    1 root     audio     14,   3 Jan  1  1970 dsp
crw-rw----    1 root     audio     14,   0 Jan  1  1970 mixer

Then make sure you have added your user to group audio.

Then to make the module load automatically when a program tries to use
the sound card, put some lines like this in you modules.conf:
# Soundcard
alias   /dev/sound              cmpci
alias   /dev/audio              /dev/sound
alias   /dev/mixer              /dev/sound
alias   /dev/dsp                /dev/sound
alias   /dev/dspW               /dev/sound
alias   /dev/midi               /dev/sound

Note, in Debian, to do this you should create a file in /etc/modutils/
with the above lines.  You could call it myaliases or something to that
effect.  Then run update-modules.  This seems to be the Debian way.

Note that I use devfs, so the device names may be a little different.
Also, I note that the devices sound, audio, dspW, midi do not exist on
my system.  Only the two above in the /dev/sound directory.

I am no expert on all of this, but I seem to remember that the only
problems I had getting sound to work on my system where permission
related and configuring the cmpci module to load when it should.

Now whenever I run xmms or run a java applet for example, the sound just
works automatically.

I would suggest you recompile sound and cmpci as a module, then try to
modprobe it.  Then try to use xmms or the like.  Then if that works, set
up your modules.conf so it happens automatically in future.

I hope this is helpful.  I am no expert, but after scouring my system
for what I did, that seemed to be it.

Cheers.
Mark.

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