misbehaving es1869 soundcard

[jabberwock]

hi

I have a siemens scenic mobile laptop with an es1869 integrated soundcard. I have recently installed slack 10.2, removing the nt which was there before. I ran without sound for a while and then succumbed to pressure from offspring to activate sound. Alsaconf found my sound card. The problem is, I can't get sounds to stop. I executed this command:

family@OldLaptop:~$ cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp

and got lots of hisses and crackles. I tried to kill the sound with ^C, but now I have pulses of hisses and crackles, kind of, well, hisssss, hisssss,hisssss,hisssss.

I've stopped it for the sake of my sanity by muting the sound in alsamixer. But as soon as I unmute it, off it goes again.

I tried the aplay command and got the same result, in that the sound was played over and over again ad infinitum.

My modules.conf file looks like this:

# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF version 1.0.9a ---
alias char-major-116 snd
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
alias snd-card-0 snd-es18xx
alias sound-slot-0 snd-es18xx
options snd-es18xx isapnp=0 dma1=1 dma2=0 irq=5
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---

/etc/modules.conf lines 1-14/14 (END)

have I missed something obvious?

Why haven't I got normal sound?

I would appreciate any assistance.

ros

[multios]

Start alsamixer and make sure that IEC958 and IEC958 1 are muted.
If you use KDE, do the same in kmix.

HTH

[jabberwock]

Hi

thanks, I've now muted everything, which has stopped the cpu overload messages I was getting.

But what I'd also like to know is, how do I get my soundcard to play sound properly?

ros

[multios]

You might see if you have the oss module for your card. Your title says it is es1869.
Try this command as root:
modinfo es1869

I'm not on my Slackware system right now

If it does, I would try these commands:
modprobe -r snd_ens1869
modprobe es1869
Then run aumix to set volumes.

If that works, stop alsa from starting when you boot.

HTH.
multios

[jabberwock]

Hi
I got it working by removing snd-es18xx module :

modprobe -r snd-es18xx

Then I ran alsaconf again, and when the following prompt came up, I answered "Yes"

No supported PnP or PCI card found.

 Would you like to probe legacy ISA sound cards/chips?

Then at the

Shall I try all possible DMA and IRQ combinations?
 With this option, some unconventional configuration
 might be found, but it will take much longer time.

prompt I said no (previously I had said yes).

Now it works and my /etc/modules.conf file looks like this:

family@OldLaptop:~$ cat /etc/modules.conf

# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF version 1.0.9a ---
alias char-major-116 snd
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
alias snd-card-0 snd-es18xx
alias sound-slot-0 snd-es18xx
options snd-es18xx isapnp=0 dma1=1 dma2=0 irq=5
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---

family@OldLaptop:~$

There only appears to be one difference and that is the dma entry. And the sound works just fine!

thanks for your help

ros