[UFO Chicago] Re: FW: hey there

[Peter A. Peterson II]

> anyway, do you think you can email me a couple
> pointers on setting up my sound?  assuming i find
> my sound card...

Sure. 

1. find out what chipset your card has. It doesn't matter who made it,
what's important is the chipset. So like, "crystal sb-compatible" isn't
good enough, we need the number from the chip -- something like "cs4236"
or emu10k1. The documentation at Dell.com (for your personal computer)
may or may not provide those numbers, but you can find it in a few
minutes if you crack the case.

2. Next, find out if you have the appropriate kernel modules compiled.
Look in /lib/modules. There you'll see directories like 2.0.36 and
2.2.19 probably. In these directories are the kernel modules you
compiled (or that came with your kernel package, depending on what you
did). In 2.2.n/misc/ you'll see a bunch of foobar.o files. These are
kernel modules -- things that you can plug into your kernel to give it
extra functionality, like digital sound processing, or toaster oven
management. (These can also be statically compiled into your kernel if
you wish. most packages however, leave module management to the user.)
What you're looking for is something like snd.o soundcore.o and
something like cs4236b.o. These are the different pieces of your sound
system.

3. Now we need to load those modules. So you do this (as root, or
preferably sudo it):

insmod snd.o
insmod soundcore.o
insmod cs4236.o

Now, assuming you didn't get any error messages (hah), your soundcard
should be installed and working. This is, of course assuming that your
soundcard was detected at boot time (i.e., is not disabled in the bios)
and has a linux kernel module for it. 

WORKING, however, silently, since the default for soundcards is
generally with all the faders pulled to 0. So apt-get install rexima (a
great console mixer), and run it, trying to adjust the faders. You may
need to run this as root (that is, until you fix the permissions on your
/dev/dsp device, right? wink, wink).

Another caveat is that you may need to install a sound daemon. I
recommend esound (only because I got it to work). So apt-get install
esound (or the package may be esd, i'm not sure) and when it's
installed, run it with a command like:

sudo /usr/bin/esd & 

If esound worked, when you install it, you should hear the
beedeebeedoobeedeeboop of the old XDR tapes. I think it's some kind of
sync tones or something.

THEN,

You can go ahead and install something to play sound. I'd recommend
xmms. so, apt-get install xmms.

THen, if it STILL doesn't work (but it did the beedeebeedoobeedeeboop
sound) you just need to tell xmms to use esd as it's output module. THe
preferences in xmms are reached by clicking the upper-left button on the
xmms console and selecting preferences. YOu can choose esd from the
output drop down menu.

This is a pretty quick and sloppy tutorial -- and it represents what I
did to make sound work on my box. If other people on the list have ideas
and/or recommendations, please, feel free to tell me what a stupid idiot
I am for doing it this way.

Also, Dave, this will not work if your sound card isn't a kernel module.
You'd have to look into ALSA, which is something i'm just starting to
play with.

Also2, Dave, you may very well need to recompile your kernel if those
modules aren't there, or you can't insmod them. Eventually, you'll want
to make these modules load at boot time, but we'll deal with that later.

pedro

PS: Dave, if you didn't notice, I forwarded this to the ufo list, so you
may want to check your doliver mailbox @thefreshness.net, or change your
subscription if you don't use that address anymore, or whatever. And
yes, I'm still on for Wednesday.

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