RH9, Maestro3, Sound Configuration

[AstroDroid]

I am having a ton of trouble getting sound to come out of my laptop. It worked on RH8, but a clean install of RH9 revealed to me that something happened with the sound. I am using a ESS1983 S Maestro-3i PCI Audio Accel. at IRQ 5 I/O at 0x4000 [0x40ff] It is device #8

When I play sound it shows that sound is playing. I have checked volume levels they are up, on , high, etc. I am using ESD and the drivers appear to load properly when I play sound.

modprobe maestro3, soundcore, ac97_codec reveal nothing. so they are loaded.

dmesg reveals that the ac97_codec is not bound to a card. Her is my output from dmesg:
maestro3: Configuring ESS Maestro3(i)hw fount at IO 0x4000 IRQ 5
maestro3: subvendor id: 0xc007144d
ac97_codec: AC97 codec, id: (Unknown)

It doesn't look like it is passing the card id to the AC97 codec. Also note that the permissions for /dev/dsp and /dev/mixer are rw for root only. I have tried changing these to 660 and 777, but it doesn't fix the problem. It also resets to rw for root only after each reboot.

So I play sound in XMMS and The equilizer starts to go, and it seems to play normally, but nothing. I should note that after starting up XMMS and exiting. ESD starts to run at 90% CPU usage, for some reason.

cat /dev/dsp reveals the following error:
read: chip lockup? dmasz 65536 fragsz 64 count 0 hwptr 0 swptr 0

Also, I don't want an answer that says use another sound system.

Help!!!!!

[mdwatts]

The following is from my kernel documentation for Maestro3. See if it helps.


An OSS/Lite Driver for the ESS Maestro3 family of sound chips

Zach Brown, January 2001

Driver Status and Availability
------------------------------

The most recent version of this driver will hopefully always be available at
http://www.zabbo.net/maestro3/

I will try and maintain the most recent stable version of the driver
in both the stable and development kernel lines.

Historically I've sucked pretty hard at actually doing that, however.

ESS Maestro3 Chip Family
-----------------------

The 'Maestro3' is much like the Maestro2 chip. The noted improvement
is the removal of the silicon in the '2' that did PCM mixing. All that
work is now done through a custom DSP called the ASSP, the Asynchronus
Specific Signal Processor.

The 'Allegro' is a baby version of the Maestro3. I'm not entirely clear
on the extent of the differences, but the driver supports them both :)

The 'Allegro' shows up as PCI ID 0x1988 and the Maestro3 as 0x1998,
both under ESS's vendor ID of 0x125D. The Maestro3 can also show up as
0x199a when hardware strapping is used.

The chip can also act as a multi function device. The modem IDs follow
the audio multimedia device IDs. (so the modem part of an Allegro shows
up as 0x1989)

Driver OSS Behavior
--------------------

This OSS driver exports /dev/mixer and /dev/dsp to applications, which
mostly adhere to the OSS spec. This driver doesn't register itself
with /dev/sndstat, so don't expect information to appear there.

The /dev/dsp device exported behaves as expected. Playback is
supported in all the various lovely formats. 8/16bit stereo/mono from
8khz to 48khz, with both read()/write(), and mmap().

/dev/mixer is an interface to the AC'97 codec on the Maestro3. It is
worth noting that there are a variety of AC'97s that can be wired to
the Maestro3. Which is used is entirely up to the hardware implementor.
This should only be visible to the user by the presence, or lack, of
'Bass' and 'Treble' sliders in the mixer. Not all AC'97s have them.
The Allegro has an onchip AC'97.

The driver doesn't support MIDI or FM playback at the moment.

Compiling and Installing
------------------------

With the drivers inclusion into the kernel, compiling and installing
is the same as most OSS/Lite modular sound drivers. Compilation
of the driver is enabled through the CONFIG_SOUND_MAESTRO3 variable
in the config system.

It may be modular or statically linked. If it is modular it should be
installed with the rest of the modules for the kernel on the system.
Typically this will be in /lib/modules/ somewhere. 'alias sound-slot-0
maestro3' should also be added to your module configs (typically
/etc/modules.conf) if you're using modular OSS/Lite sound and want to
default to using a maestro3 chip.

There are very few options to the driver. One is 'debug' which will
tell the driver to print minimal debugging information as it runs. This
can be collected with 'dmesg' or through the klogd daemon.

The other is 'external_amp', which tells the driver to attempt to enable
an external amplifier. This defaults to '1', you can tell the driver
not to bother enabling such an amplifier by setting it to '0'.

Power Management
----------------

This driver has a minimal understanding of PCI Power Management. It will
try and power down the chip when the system is suspended, and power
it up with it is resumed. It will also try and power down the chip
when the machine is shut down.

[AstroDroid]

I read through the info, I got out of it that I'm a 0x199a sound card guy. I'm not sure how I would pass any of the options spoken about to the maestro3 module. Unfortunately I may be giving up on ESD and moving to ALSA, because from what I read that's the directions of Linux sound.............. But the why part of this bugs me. why did it work in RH8 with no modifications , just turn off pnp. Use the old maestro driver, etc. More ideas?

[mdwatts]

The volumes are adjusted, but is anything muted?

Is it only XMMS you have tried? Does XMMS require you to set the audio output plugin?

If the modules are loaded, the volumes adjusted (nothing muted), /dev/dsp permissions correct and the speakers plugged in, it should work.

<searching keywords>

Maestro3 Maestro

[AstroDroid]

XMMS does have a place to set your sound srvr and it's set to ESD. I also tried the CD Player provided by RH. No go. I'm taking the ALSA route tonight. Wish me luck.

[AstroDroid]

I read somewhere that if the kernel autoclean is on it will mess up your sound driver. I have noticed in lsmod that (autoclean) is next to the modules. Can anyone confirm/deny this?

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by AstroDroid
I read somewhere that if the kernel autoclean is on it will mess up your sound driver. I have noticed in lsmod that (autoclean) is next to the modules. Can anyone confirm/deny this?

I've never heard that so I cannot confirm or deny.

What soundcard related modules does 'lsmod' show?

Is this a PCI or ISA soundcard?

[AstroDroid]

lsmod shows maestro3, ac97_codec, and soundcore.

I'm not sure if this helps, but a modprobe -c shows the options, but there is one option that is not listed in modules.conf and looks like it may be soundblaster related. The option is

options sb io=0x220 irq=7 dma=1 dma16=5 mpu_io=0x330

I just reinstalled (again) and nothing. Alsa loaded correctly (so it looked like) and it didn't produce any sound. so I reinstalled and am back to working with ESD.

[mdwatts]

So it's a ISA PnP card?

[AstroDroid]

sorry PCI PnP, however PnP is off in the bios.

[mdwatts]

Then I doubt you would be able to use

options sb io=0x220 irq=7 dma=1 dma16=5 mpu_io=0x330

since it's PCI.

Strange as the modules seem to be loaded, but still no sound.

And you have

alias sound-slot-0 maestro3

in /etc/modules.conf ?

With a cd player, you do require a audio cable between the cdrom and soundcard.

Have you tried other sound apps?

Sound mixers? kmix, aumix etc.?

[AstroDroid]

Audio works fine in my Wintel partition, cd-playing, mp3's , etc. So no hardware issues like the audio cable, etc.

I have tried xmms, and the cd-player that comes with redhat, nothing else, I am using gnome cd-player it looks like

aumix loads, nothing is muted,

I'm starting to think it's a driver issue.

sorry modules.conf has the alias info in it: here it is.

alias sound-slot-0 maestro3
post-install sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -L >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
pre-remove sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -S >/dev/null 2>&1 || :

I had added alias char-major-14 maestro3 to the modules conf to see if it would help. It didn't

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by AstroDroid
Audio works fine in my Wintel partition, cd-playing, mp3's , etc. So no hardware issues like the audio cable, etc.


Actually Linux does apparently require you to have a audio cable if you plan on playing audio cd's. That is why I asked if you had tried other sound apps besides audio cd's and XMMS.

[AstroDroid]

So it's possible for cd-audio to work in wintel and not linux because of an audio cable. This doesn't make sense to me for 2 reasons 1. I have a laptop with a removable CD drive and 2. It worked in RH8 with no problems and the same hardware. I had heard of a problem with the Maestro3 driver on RH's site with RH8 and an updated kernel. I did try the suggestions there as well, with no avail. I don't think it's a kernel issue.

http://www.redhat.com/archives/sound-list/2002-October/msg00101.html

[mdwatts]

The 'audio cable' is what I've read in many previous posts here. Personally I do not play audio cd's on my pc's with either Windows or Linux.

[AstroDroid]

I am going to have to eat a little crow for this.

I booted into my windows install 2 days ago and my sound didn't work. ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH it was hardware all along.

I spent hours on this stupid problem. I received a laptop shell replacement and boom the sound worked.

Sorry for my stupidity, and thanks for the help.

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by AstroDroid
I am going to have to eat a little crow for this.

I booted into my windows install 2 days ago and my sound didn't work. ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH it was hardware all along.

I spent hours on this stupid problem. I received a laptop shell replacement and boom the sound worked.

Sorry for my stupidity, and thanks for the help.

I've heard a little ketchup goes well with that. ;)

No problem... Enjoy your sound now.