Scharf Yuval wrote: > Hello, > > For dozens of hours I tried to make the ens1371 in my old Compaq computer > in my university produce any sound with no luck. > > Today I tried to play a CD but it didn't work. I became very suspicious, > playing a CD has very little to do with the OS. > > So I took two speakers, connected to the soundcard and booted to Windows. > Windows kept using the internal speaker. > > I booted to Linux, and EVERYTHING worked great with the external > speakers. :-) > > So, Windows uses only the internal speaker and Linux uses only the > external speakers. I wasn't aware the internal speaker could produce anything more than different beeps ;) Is this perhaps a laptop?
yes it can, windows loads a special driver that will emulate sound by using square sine waves (by just turning the speaker on and off you can create a square "wave" which kind of sounds like a normal sine wave). i did it all the time before soundcards were invented. linux on the other hand doesnt do that so it just loads the drivers for the sound card into which you have to plug the external speakers. so the question is really why does windows not detect the soundcard???
> Can someone explain to me what is going on. Usually in computers, if > there are no external speakers the internal speaker works and when you plug in the > the external speakers they start to work. Is it a hardware feature or a > software feature. Can I control which speakers will be use. I am currently using my Creative Ensoniq 1371 to play MP3s in Linux. No special config required. I just built the driver into the kernel. In my experience, my computer, nor any other computer I have worked with, has *never* defaulted to the internal speaker when I didn't have external speakers plugged in.
