Alex Salmon wrote:
> As far as i can tell the install of M 7.2 went pretty seamlessly
> (luckey basted).
Extremely lucky I'd say, since Mandrake have only released 7.1 :-) But
just checking though - do you mean MDK 7.1, or MDK 7.02? (There's a
reasonable difference - 7.02 is generally more stable, less beta stuff
to play with, but then 7.1 is more likely to support cutting edge stuff,
even if it sometimes breaks - eg Reiser FS, XFree 4.0). Both 7.02 and
7.1 should support a SB Live out of the box though. The original release
of MDK 7 had a lot of bugs, if your friend is using this, that may be
the problem. Seems like there were no unusual error messages during
install though?
> The sound works fine in win which suggests not harware
> probs but who knows.
No, I doubt it's a hardware problem.
> what exactly is dsp is it just a direct link to the
> sound card.
Not entirely sure myself. A DSP is a Digital Signal Processor, it's a
processor dedicated to high speed signal processing. At a guess, I think
that /dev/dsp would be linked to the DSP on the SB Live. I've got
/dev/dsp - /dev/dsp3 on my Mandrake 7.1 box with SB Live. If your friend
doesn't have these, then I think that something went wrong during the
install. Have a look in /dev, try 'ls -l /dev/dsp*'. /dev/dsp should be
a sym link to /dev/dsp0, then you should see /dev/dsp0 - /dev/dsp3. If
your friend has /dev/dsp0 etc, try doing 'ln -s /dev/dsp0 /dev/dsp'.
This will create the sym link that may be missing for some reason, and
thus causing complaints about the missing /dev/dsp. (Though I have no
idea how this could happen).
> is there any other was oss drivers
Yes, there are, the ALSA project <http://www.alsa-project.org> supports
SB Live. You may also like to look at <http://opensource.creative.com/>.
But, if your friend is using Mandrake 7 or above, this should not be
necessary, and it could actually complicate things if you try installing
drivers that Mandrake doesn't know about.
> or what about esd
esd is not actually a sound card driver, you need to have your sound
card configured properly with the right drivers so that it can talk to
esd. I don't think you'll find any help from esd in this case.
> how do
> they communicate w/ the hardware.
This is a mystery only entrusted to the truly elite. (Not me :-)
> He is running windowmaker if that
> changes anything.
I don't think the window manager should matter here.
> Is there a way to reinstall all sound stuff or do i just tell hi to back
> up /home and reinstall.
Tempted to say 'Yes reinstall', because I know that Mandrake should do
this all for you, but I'm still interested in working out what's wrong.
You may have some luck using DrakConf, try looking in 'Hardware
configuration', which I'm guessing your friend has already played with.
I'm unwilling to check this for you, because it usually crashes my box
while trying to work out what to do with my ISA NIC, but there may be
something in there. The fact that it played the test sound is
interesting, suggests that sound may have been working before your
friend saved whatever he had done (or something along those lines) -
what exactly did he do in there? Interested to know: exactly what
version of Mandrake we're talking about, whether there's any /dev/dsp*
files at all, anything else that's in the box - network cards,
winmodems, other sound cards, elephants etc, anything else your friend
has done. Your friend hasn't installed the SB Live after installing
Linux has he?, that would change things. If you really can't work out
what's wrong, then in this circumstance I'd suggest you try a reinstall,
taking careful note of everything that happens, and not mucking around
with the sound card at all afterwards. Are you certain that the sound
card didn't work after the original install, and that it wasn't just a
matter of turning up the volume?
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