Ah. that explains why I have never seen it - I always let my machines boot up from grub on the full timeout and most of them have pretty slow bootup processes. It is probably best to retry for 1 minute or so in module init to allow for very fast boots (after all the pci id has matched, so only broken hardware will never succeed).
Justin On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 18:37, Mark Knecht wrote: > Hi Justin, > It looks like I solved this problem in the last few days. The issue > appears to driven by how Alsa, or possibly the snd-hdsp driver specifically, > attempts to discover the HDSP 9652, and the fact that my machine is > moderately fast. I think this is a bug, or at least an opportunity to allow > for some boot time tuning in Alsa somewhere, and I've reported it to Thomas > privately. > > On my machine, and Athlon XP 2600+, I use System Commander 7 to partition > the drives and to boot to DOS or Linux, and then grub to boot the Linux > kernel I'm interested in. Currently SC7 has a timeout value of 20 seconds > and grub has a time out value of 8 seconds. > > What I've found is that if I boot the machine and do not speed up the > boot by hitting enter in either of these programs, then Alsa finds the HDSP > 9652 100% of the time. However, if I boot but hit enter as early as possible > in both programs then Alsa misses the HDSP 9652 100% of the time. > > So, the answer is just giving the machine enough time before starting the > Alsa discovery processes. > > Owing to my hardware background and use of FPGA's in other areas, the > Xilinx FPGA on the HDSP 9652 uses an outboard Flash chip to hold it's > configuration code. (Sometimes called firmware here, but not really > firmware.) This data is read out of the Flash chip in a fairly slow serial > bitstream and takes some time. My suspicion is that by hitting the enter key > twice I get to the Alsa boot stage too early, the configuration code is not > loaded, and the driver cannot find the card even after 100 tries. If I don't > hit enter, the configuration operation gets the extra 28 seconds and that is > more than enough time to load the config code before the Alsa driver looks > for the card. > > I've never been comfortable with the message 'failed after 100 > iterations'. To me this is not a good way to look for hardware since as > machines speed up the amount of time you are giving gets shorter, so > possibly Thomas will address this sometime in the future. Until then I'll > just look for the smallest value I can make the boot time and still get the > card to be recognized. > > I hope this helps someone in the future not have this problem. Thanks for > your help. > > Cheers, > Mark > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Mark Knecht > > Sent: Sunday, December 21, 2003 9:14 AM > > To: Justin Cormack > > Cc: Alsa-Devel > > Subject: Re: [Alsa-devel] Why does Alsa sometimes not find the HDSP > > 9652? > > > > > > Justin, > > I'm running Alsa-1.0.0rc2. How much more up to date could I be? > > > > Also, this is an HDSP 9652 which has the firmware on the board. Why > > is a firmware loader required at all? > > > > Possibly you're on to something I don't see yet? Maybe something is > > left over from an older version and causing problems? > > > > Let me know, > > Mark > > > > On Sun, 2003-12-21 at 09:11, Justin Cormack wrote: > > > On Sun, 2003-12-21 at 16:03, Mark Knecht wrote: > > > > Justin, > > > > Hi. Thanks. syslog from that series of boots is attached. > > > > > > > > Note the first boot, line 304 looks like this: > > > > > > > > Dec 20 05:43:46 Wizard kernel: ALSA > > > > ../../alsa-kernel/pci/rme9652/hdsp.c:807: wait for FIFO status <= 0 > > > > failed after 100 iterations > > > > Dec 20 05:43:46 Wizard kernel: RME Hammerfall-DSP: no cards found > > > > > > ah. Update your alsa to the latest version. This is the old firmware > > > loader bug. It is fixed now (but there is a seperate loader hdsploader > > > that you have to run). > > > > > > Justin > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > > This SF.net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials. > > Become an expert in LINUX or just sharpen your skills. Sign up for IBM's > > Free Linux Tutorials. Learn everything from the bash shell to sys admin. > > Click now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1278&alloc_id=3371&op=click > > _______________________________________________ > > Alsa-devel mailing list > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-devel > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials. > Become an expert in LINUX or just sharpen your skills. Sign up for IBM's > Free Linux Tutorials. Learn everything from the bash shell to sys admin. > Click now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1278&alloc_id=3371&op=click > _______________________________________________ > Alsa-devel mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-devel ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials. Become an expert in LINUX or just sharpen your skills. Sign up for IBM's Free Linux Tutorials. 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