quake2 and /dev/dsp woes

[miker]

running quake2 v3.21 i get no sound :-(

either it reports /dev/dsp as busy, which i think is just a permsissions thing because when i enable read/write access for others (or in kde run 'soundwrapper quake2') i get the rather woeful error:

SNDDMA_Init: Sorry, but your soundcard doesn't support trigger or mmap. (00000000)

so is that it? am i doomed to play quake2 muted forever? or is there a fix for this? sound on my system (mdk9) is fine apart from quake2 :-(

[bwkaz]

It seems that your problem may be that you can't open the /dev/dsp device from two different programs at the same time. If the sound-outputting programs all use a software mixer (like, for example, the KDE one which is named arts), then the mixer opens the /dev/dsp device and outputs the mixed sound data itself.

When one program has /dev/dsp open, and another program tries to open it, you get that "device busy" message.

So, I think if you shut down arts (artscontrol stop, I believe, will do that -- if not, check artscontrol --help for how to stop it), start Q2, then restart arts (again, check the --help for how), it might work.

[miker]

i changed my sound-driver module (from oss to alsa i think) then i got really choppy sound in quake2. because mandrake said the recommended module for my soundcard (i810) was actually oss i swapped the modules back.

and now i get perfect sound in quake2

go figure!