Re: sound card problem

[Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com>]

ymc014 wrote:
> Hello,
> 
>      I had just installed Red Hat 9 but I have a problem with my
> soundcard,it does not recognize the Creative SoundBlaster in my hardware, I
> tried looking at the creative website for a driver suitable for linux
> unfortunately I didn't find any. So am I hopeless here?I wouldn't want to go
> back to XP but if I cannot use my soundcard I do not have any other option.
> Thanks.

There are many different cards whose names begin with "Creative 
SoundBlaster", and most, if not all, are supported by recent (2.4.x and 
2.6.x) Linux kernels. Typically they will use (on 2.4.x, anyway) the 
SBLive module.

First thing to do is see if "modprobe sb" does anything useful.

Second thing is to run "lspci -vv" and check the section for the 
"Multimedia audio controller". If there is not one ... might you have an 
old, ISA-bus sound card (I doubt it, since you mention XT as the 
alternate OS)?

Third thing to do is wonder if you have a PnP problem. I'm not sure what 
default Red Hat kernels do here, but the usual solution in Linux is to 
let the BIOS handle PnP (that is, in the BIOS setup screens, wherever it 
asks about "PnP OS", say No so the BIOS will know to set up IRQs ans IO 
ports.

(Do both the above things as root.)

Creative does (or did) provide some drivers, but I think the kernel 
drivers these days handle most, if not all, SoundBlaster cards. 
Certainly the info at http://opensource.creative.com/soundcard.html 
seems to say this is so. They do mention there that some more recent 
cards require the ALSA drivers, which RH may not try by default (not 
being a Red Hat user, I'm not sure what it autoprobes).

Beyond this ... we can probably be of more help to you, but not until 
you tell us more about the hardware ... a general description of the 
system (especially if it actually has sound on the mobo) and the info 
the lspci command I mention above reports about the audio subsystem. If 
you do post again with these details, please also include the output of

	lsmod
	more /proc/interrupts
	more /proc/ioports
	uname -a

Your final recourse (other than XT) is, of course, to replace the sound 
card with one that is supported. Here in the USA, that's a pretty cheap 
solution (around $30, usually little enough money to spend for the 
opportunity to run Linux). I don't know if prices in Japan are similarly 
modest, though.

BTW, these days Red Hat 9 is not current version of Linux. If you prefer 
REd Hat to the other distros, you probably want to move to Fedora (see 
http://www.redhat.com/apps/download/ to get started with this). But this 
is probably not related to your problem.

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs