Re: Questions about soundcard discovery

Mr. Costescu,

Thanks for the reply. See below for some clarity, as I realize this was a 
confusing post.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bogdan Costescu" <Bogdan.Costescu-hEciA7+sKtudPOQpRHQ53DeJuz7u0hKX@public.gmane.org>
To: "Steve Campbell" <campbell-TtXmYh9KqR1Wk0Htik3J/[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 1:30 PM
Subject: Re: [Tao-discuss] Questions about soundcard discovery


> On Tue, 14 Feb 2006, Steve Campbell wrote:
>
>> The PC orignally had an on-board soundcard, which did not seem to
>> work. I disabled that and replaced it with another type of sound
>> card, and it too would not work.
>
> Do you have a cable connecting the CD drive to the sound card ? This
> can be either a 4 pin one (analog) or a 2 pin one (digital); on the CD
> drive the connection is usually to the left of the IDE cable one.
>

Yes, there is a cable. Originally, my father had an HP with a sound card in 
it. This was the small machine. I brought him home a Dell with larger 
hardware, and it had the onboard soundcard. Both had the cable and the HP 
card was eventually moved to the Dell with cable. Both were 4 pin.

>> I can not even listen to the CD directly from the CD drive with
>> headphones, but the CD player will read the disc fine, it just won't
>> play.
>
> This is a bit confusing. How do you know that the "player will read
> the disc fine" ? There are 3 ways of listening to a CD:
> - connecting an external device (headphones, stereo, etc.) to the
> external jack connection on the front of the CD drive. The CD player
> program only needs to give commands to the drive as to what/when to
> play/stop, etc. and read some data about the actual position/time if
> needed for display.

When I open the CD player, the titles are displayed of the inserted disc. I 
assume this means it is reading at least the TOC of the disc. I tried using 
a set of headphones plugged into the front external jack, but was not able 
to make the CD player function. (the Play button did nothing). I believe 
this should have worked without a sound card.
>
> - connecting a sound card to the audio connection on the back of the
> CD drive (which I mentioned above); then the external device
> (headphones, stereo, etc.) is connected to Line Out of sound card.
> The CD player program does the same as previously.
>
> - using the IDE connection to transfer audio data from the CD drive to
> the main memory then playing it back through the PCM/Wave channel of
> the sound card. The external devices are connected to Line Out of
> sound card. The CD player program has to do all the data reading from
> the CD drive and playing through the sound card, which makes for a
> significantly higher CPU usage, especially if the CD drive is used in
> PIO (as opposed to DMA) mode (hdparm -vi /dev/hdX can tell if DMA is
> currently used). I think that xmms can be used as a CD player in this
> mode.
>
> In the first 2 cases, there is a volume control on the drive itself
> that can be controlled normally through the CD player program; this is
> an internal drive control, not to be confused with the external one
> that can be used to control the volume in the first case.
>
> So, which ones have you tried ?

I have tried the headphone/volume-control-on-the-front method. Without a 
soundcard being recognized, there is no mixer Volume Control to be used, so 
any other method can not be used.
>
>> But "Soundcard Discovery" never finds anything once the system is up
>> and running.
>
> It's possible that both (all) sound cards are not properly supported
> by the kernel. What distribution version are you using anyway ?

This was Tao 1.0 Update 6. The CD drives are all generic flavors. It's 
possible that both cards are not supported, but then I don't understand why 
they needed to be unconfigured. I'm not sure of the types, one was part of 
the motherboard, the other, the internal moved from the HP, did not have the 
manufacturer or model number, but when unconfiguring, there was a type 
displayed. Sorry, I didn't write it down, but assumed it knew what it was 
doing since it told me of the model.
>
> -- 
> Bogdan Costescu
>
> IWR - Interdisziplinaeres Zentrum fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen
> Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
> Telephone: +49 6221 54 8869, Telefax: +49 6221 54 8868
> E-mail: Bogdan.Costescu-PDzUyZpvkMP/PDbm/[email protected]
>

I realize this is weird, as it appears to be discovering the soundcard, or 
else it would not  need to 'remove from configuration', but I have not been 
able to display the sound card once the system is up and running. I even 
think I found a /dev entry for the soundcard, but am not sure.

It bothers me more that the CD player displays no time/motion indicatiors 
once the "Play" button is pressed. I configured the player to start playing 
when a disc is inserted, also, to no avail.

Thanks much for the help.

Steve Campbell
campbell-TtXmYh9KqR1Wk0Htik3J/[email protected]
Charleston Newspapers