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#1 2008-02-01 02:11:32
- violagirl23
- Member
- Registered: 2008-01-24
- Posts: 184
SoundBlaster 16 card not found on Arch (But fine in Gentoo)
I have been trying to get alsa set up on my new Arch installation and banging my head about it because it is not working.... I might have finally figured out why. I think it's not detecting my sound card! I make my own kernel (I didn't have Arch for more than a day before I could no longer resist downloading the sources and making the kernel myself, though I based it off the arch stock kernel config file and tweaked from there) but I had this same problem with the stock kernel. ALL the options for ALSA are set right and my sound card is also in the kernel (I'm POSITIVE, I did the exact same thing on Gentoo and know exactly what the driver is, Sound Blaster 16, so snd-sb16). The only difference is that.... on Gentoo it *worked.*
I wasn't expecting alsa to auto-detect this old ISA card either... it can't (XD). I ran alsaconf just like I did on Gentoo, selected everything... but it failed near the end because it couldn't find the sound device. Same with alsamixer. I honestly don't think it could be my kernel because I have the right modules compiled in. I also wonder if this is a distro-problem I am having and not a Linux problem, because the exact same method worked perfectly on Gentoo.
/proc/asound/cards
--- no soundcards ---I even tried downloading the sources for alsa and doing ./snddevices but that didn't help.
Since it's an ISA sound card, it won't show up in lspci.
Now, I tried getting isapnptools, and it does seem to find the sound card now at bootup, but not really in alsaconf or anything. But the thing is, it's not a plug-and-play sound card, I believe. I checked my Gentoo box and I had isapnp but it was NOT running, and my sound was working fine. 
This is all it says in dmesg:
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
pnp: SB audio device quirk - increasing port range
isapnp: Card 'Creative SB16 PnP'
isapnp: 1 Plug & Play card detected total
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 4 ports, IRQ sharing disabled
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
00:05: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
00:06: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A(I have a feeling all the serial lines do not apply to the sound card and are the next thing in dmesg but I included them just in case).
At this point I'm just completely lost after a day of debugging with absolutely no success.
I've tried adding this to the options line for the driver in modprobe.conf, but modprobe snd-sb16 just said io was an unknown snd-sb16 io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 dma16=3
For some background on the Gentoo setup....
This is /proc/asound/cards in Gentoo:
0 [S16 ]: SB16 - Sound Blaster 16
Sound Blaster 16 at 0x220, irq 5, dma 1&5and this is my /etc/modprobe.conf in Gentoo for the card:
alias /dev/mixer snd-mixer-oss
alias /dev/dsp snd-pcm-oss
alias /dev/midi snd-seq-oss
alias snd-card-0 snd-sb16
alias sound-slot-0 snd-sb16
options snd-sb16 isapnp=0Arch currently says this (after an alsaconf, which still failed at the end):
# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF version 1.0.15 ---
alias snd-card-0 snd-sb16
alias sound-slot-0 snd-sb16
options snd-sb16 isapnp=0
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---And lastly, this is exactly what alsaconf says when it fails:
Loading driver...
:: Saving ALSA Levels [BUSY]
/usr/sbin/alsactl: save_state:1251: No soundcards found... [FAIL]
:: Restoring ALSA Levels [BUSY]
/usr/sbin/alsactl: load_state:1313: Cannot open /etc/asound.state for reading: No such file or directory [FAIL]
Setting default volumes...
amixer: Mixer attach default error: No such device
Saving the mixer setup used for this in /etc/asound.state.
/usr/sbin/alsactl: save_state:1251: No soundcards found...Does anyone have any idea what I should try? I've tried debugging the problem but nothing I do seems to be working still.
Oh and this Arch's output of lsmod:
Module Size Used by
snd_sb16 12588 0
snd_opl3_lib 8832 1 snd_sb16
snd_hwdep 7428 1 snd_opl3_lib
snd_sb16_dsp 8832 1 snd_sb16
snd_sb_common 15104 2 snd_sb16,snd_sb16_dsp
snd_mpu401_uart 7168 1 snd_sb16
snd_rawmidi 19232 1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_oss 29568 0
snd_seq_midi_event 6656 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 47056 4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 7052 4 snd_opl3_lib,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 38688 0
snd_mixer_oss 14592 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 69252 3 snd_sb16,snd_sb16_dsp,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 19332 3 snd_opl3_lib,snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd 44644 14 snd_sb16,snd_opl3_lib,snd_hwdep,snd_sb16_dsp,snd_sb_common,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 6496 1 snd
snd_page_alloc 8200 1 snd_pcmPhew, well, that's about as much info as I could think of!
Hopefully someone can help. 
Last edited by violagirl23 (2008-02-01 02:13:23)
"You can't just ask to borrow somebody else's lampshade. It's AWKWARD!"
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#2 2008-02-01 02:59:23
- brebs
- Member
- Registered: 2007-04-03
- Posts: 3,742
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#3 2008-02-02 02:46:15
- violagirl23
- Member
- Registered: 2008-01-24
- Posts: 184
Re: SoundBlaster 16 card not found on Arch (But fine in Gentoo)
See wiki for debugging. This is the best howto guide in the world, and I should know because I wrote it
:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:
You are very helpful. You always answer my questions. I guess I'll just have to fiddle around with it more.... >.> I don't mind debugging things, but when I'm not making any progress it just gets a little disheartening is all, especially if I *know* I got it to work before.
Thank you for the help.
I'm really starting to loathe this ancient ISA sound card..... >.<
Last edited by violagirl23 (2008-02-02 02:49:35)
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