[vox-tech] SoundBlaster 16 woes

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Sun 26 Dec 04,  3:05 PM, Bill Kendrick <nbs at sonic.net> said:
> 
> Hello, all!  Happy Holidays!
> 
> I just got back from out of town and did an 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade'
> on my Debian Testing box.  In the process, it apparently installed an
> updated version of the Linux kernel 2.4.27-1-686 package, and told me
> (using VERY strong words) that I needed to reboot. :^)
> 
> 30 seconds later (I always forget how fast Linux reboots compared to WinXP!)
> I was up and running... /except/ sound stopped working!
> 
> It's been a LONG time since I set any of this stuff up, but I believe I've
> been using the 'sb' kernel module for an ancient SoundBlaster 16 card in
> this Celeron system.  ("/etc/modules" has a line with "sb" on it ;^) )
> 
> Unfortunately, when I do "modprobe sb", nothing happens.  "lsmod" doesn't
> show the 'sb' module loaded (and "rmmod sb" complains that it's not loaded).
> 
> I checked 'dmesg', /var/log/messages and /var/log/syslog and see nothing
> in any of them when I run the 'modprobe' command.
> 
> Is there somewhere else I should be looking, or other things I can try?
> 
> Thanks!  (It's quiet...  TOO quiet  ;^) )
> 
> -bill!

Bill,


One: Do you see anything interesting with this:

   strace modprobe -a sb 2>&1 | egrep -v 'map|brk'


Two: Does modprobe -v give any additional information?


Three: sb depends on other other modules being loaded in before hand
   ("module stacking").  Are those other modules present?  What happens
   when you try to modprobe THEM if they aren't loaded?  It's been a long
   time since I've used the OSS drivers, but I think the main dependency
   is simply called "sound.o".


Four: Have you checked debian-user?


Five: Get rid of that card right now.  You can get a nice PCI-128 card for
   8-12 bucks.  It'll work flawlessly.  It even works better on Linux than
   it does for win2k/winnt, and they wrote their own drivers.  Heh.  There's
   no reason to have ISA.  Even if you like DOS games, DOSBox runs DOS games
   better than DOS ever did, and all its sb stuff is emulated -- works with
   any sound card.


Six: You better start praying right now that Rod isn't correct...   ;-)


Also
-- 
The mathematics of physics has become ever more abstract, rather than more
complicated.  The mind of God appears to be abstract but not complicated.
He also appears to like group theory.  --  Tony Zee's "Fearful Symmetry"

GPG Fingerprint: B9F1 6CF3 47C4 7CD8 D33E  70A9 A3B9 1945 67EA 951D