LinuxQuestions.org
Download your favorite Linux distribution at LQ ISO.
Go Back   LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Hardware
User Name
Password
Linux - Hardware This forum is for Hardware issues.
Having trouble installing a piece of hardware? Want to know if that peripheral is compatible with Linux?

Notices


Reply
  Search this Thread
Old 07-10-2002, 10:00 AM   #1
blueplazma
Member
 
Registered: Jun 2002
Distribution: Debian/Ubuntu
Posts: 56

Rep: Reputation: 15
Game Theater XP


Has anyone had any experience with the Hercules Game Theater XP in Linux? Does it work well (e.g. do all the breakout connections function), does it not work well? It's based on the Cirus Logic 4630 chipset, so has anyone had experience with that chipset in Linux? I'm running Kernel 2.4.18 on Debian Woody.
 
Old 07-10-2002, 11:53 AM   #2
finegan
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 5,700

Rep: Reputation: 72
Guillemot tends to base a lot of their gear on the cmedia sound chipset, which is getting a tonof support in the newer kernels for all of its new yippe-doodle extras.

I've got a friend with an SBLive version of this kind of front-mounted 5+1/4 bay sound kit and his works fine under 2.4.18, but that's an entirely different sound chipset.

Most of this gear hooks up to the mobo by standard outputs (cheaper that way!), but some of it could be very wierd. Do you have a link to anything that would mention what chipset this monster runs on?

Cheers,

Finegan
 
Old 07-10-2002, 12:18 PM   #3
blueplazma
Member
 
Registered: Jun 2002
Distribution: Debian/Ubuntu
Posts: 56

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 15
I'm pretty sure it says it somewhere on that page. Anyhow, it runs on the CS4630 chipset. I'm just concerned with the breakout functions because I have the older SBLive Platinum and my breakout stuff doesn't function at all. I don't want to get all the fancy breakout stuff and end up having no sound.

Here we go: Technical stuff
 
Old 07-10-2002, 01:01 PM   #4
finegan
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 5,700

Rep: Reputation: 72
ta da

Might not be that good an idea, but that article, as well as 2.4.18 is a couple months old, so I looked through the menuconfig of 2.5.24. It's nice to have these things handy, which also contains, yippee!, the ALSA modules, which are going to be added to the kernel with 2.6! Again, no help, Yamaha is a biotch about releasing specs, as is aztec and a few others so only the low end aspects of the card will work.

Cheers,

Finegan
 
Old 07-10-2002, 01:19 PM   #5
blueplazma
Member
 
Registered: Jun 2002
Distribution: Debian/Ubuntu
Posts: 56

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 15
Hmmm... well that review said that the Game Theater was horrible under Linux. How old is that review anyway? When will the 2.6 kernels be coming out?
 
Old 07-10-2002, 02:17 PM   #6
blueplazma
Member
 
Registered: Jun 2002
Distribution: Debian/Ubuntu
Posts: 56

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 15
Quote:
Originally posted by finegan

Again, no help, Yamaha is a biotch about releasing specs, as is aztec and a few others so only the low end aspects of the card will work.

Cheers,

Finegan [/B]
What do Yamaha/aztec have to do with the CS4630 or the Game Theater XP?
 
Old 07-10-2002, 02:33 PM   #7
finegan
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 5,700

Rep: Reputation: 72
Quote:
Originally posted by blueplazma
Hmmm... well that review said that the Game Theater was horrible under Linux. How old is that review anyway? When will the 2.6 kernels be coming out?
April, 3 months, 2.4.19 doesn't hold any sound improvements on this card. I checked the changelog.

2.6.x, about a year, according to a recent interview with Linus. 2.5.24 is the development kernel from about 2 weeks ago. I had it compiled on one of my machines at home, so I used its menuconfig to see if there was anything new compared to 2.4.18's and then did a quick grep through the source for the chipsets on both source trees.

The ADC and the DAC chips used for the high end, 48Khz and up sound, are the ones causing the trouble. That part is made by Yamaha. It was the third or fourth hit off of google.com/linux if you wanted to recreate the search. It was an lkml post. I just mentioned Aztec as another example as I spent a few hours last weekend trying to get beta-out-of-kernel crap to work with one their cards. I should just replace the card for $5.

Cheers,

Finegan
 
Old 07-10-2002, 02:57 PM   #8
blueplazma
Member
 
Registered: Jun 2002
Distribution: Debian/Ubuntu
Posts: 56

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 15
So does this mean that it will work but I won't get some features? Could you give me a link to a page with details or just list them?
 
Old 07-10-2002, 04:43 PM   #9
finegan
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 5,700

Rep: Reputation: 72
Just do what I did: here.

Cheers,

Finegan
 
Old 03-21-2003, 03:35 PM   #10
DoultonRo
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Mar 2003
Posts: 4

Rep: Reputation: 0
I have this card installed on SuSE 8.0 and wow did it take a long time, at first I thought since it had some Crystal chipset drivers already that it would work fine, turns out the crystal drivers that come in my disto only supported a chip for a thinkpad laptop. and the driver did not support the pre-amping done by the little cool box. the sound turned out terrible very distorted and very low volume. After some serious tweaking by my linux-nut roomate we managed to get a driver working that supported just stereo but it had the full volume and cut out all the distortion. I do extrememly recomend this card for windows, as with the new 7.1 drivers it works like no other, but under linux until Hercules decides to give someone (like my roommate, hehee) the specs there's nothing more at least I can really expect.

Rather Disappointed.....
 
Old 03-21-2003, 05:30 PM   #11
finegan
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 5,700

Rep: Reputation: 72
This also happens to be the card onboard my Ultra Sparc 5, yeah, no kidding, a Sun machine. I never got it to adequately work under linux, but its nice and loud under... believe it or not: OpenBSD 3.2!

Cheers,

Finegan
 
Old 05-26-2003, 07:22 PM   #12
SilverStrm
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: May 2003
Location: USA
Distribution: Varies - Current is RH9
Posts: 3

Rep: Reputation: 0
Hercules Game Theater XP

I have a Game Theater XP running under RedHat 9.0. So far, I do have sound using the CS4630 chipset; however, it is sound only from the front 2 speakers. Also, at high volumes, a good bit of distortion can be heard. I am still searching for a fix for these issues. As far as advice I can give, don't upgrade to the GTXP just yet. Hope that helps ya out.

-Silver Storm
 
Old 05-27-2003, 07:36 AM   #13
Evilone
Member
 
Registered: Oct 2002
Location: UK
Distribution: Slack 9.1 (2.6.5)
Posts: 307

Rep: Reputation: 30
what in gods name are you all on about??

Use ALSA drivers dood, my XP works flawlessly under slackware on the 2.4.20 kernel.

!!

www.alsa-project.org
 
Old 03-12-2005, 04:46 AM   #14
MFC
Member
 
Registered: Mar 2005
Posts: 31

Rep: Reputation: 15
GTXP on 2.6.11 Kernel?

Hi!

I have a dilemma that has come to be of great annoyance.

I cannot use my Hauppauge Win-TV FM and the GTXP 7.1 sound card at the same time.
Or at least not with the same kernel. For reference I am using Slackware 10.1.

I have two kernels that I choose between upon boot-up (Lilo). These two kernels
have but two functions, one each. Namely the following:

2.4.29: To be able to use my GTXP 7.1 sound-card. The issue with this kernel is that I cannot
use my Hauppauge Win-TV FM (bt878) card.

2.6.11: To be able to use my Hauppauge Win-TV FM (bt878) card. The issue with this
kernel is that I cannot use my GTXP 7.1 card.

With the 2.6.11 kernel the alsa device list only shows the dummy device (to avoid errormessages if no sound device is found). The funny thing is that devices are found from the USB port, aswell as the gameport on my external device (that came with GTXP 7.1). Its only the sound-card itself that cannot be detected. If I run lspci its listed as CS4614/22/24 thus identified on the pci-bus.

for the 2.4.29 kernel my sound-card is identified as a CS4294 or at least that is what the
mixer says, thus I draw the conclusion that this is the chip used in the card contradictory
to the forum posts where its supposed to be CS4624 but lspci also shows (se above) CS6414/22/24.

In none of the kernels is there a specific CS4294 card to configure so I have chosen the
CS46xx chips and that works (logical I suppose since that seems to be the chip) with the 2.4.29 kernel but not with the 2.6.11 using ALSA. I have tried using OSS and its deprecated (according to kernel 2.6.11 config) drivers also but to no avail.

I am quite stuck on this matter as I have tried, in my frustration, to mark every markable
sound-card or chip in the kernel config and compile but without result.

If anyone knows the trick with the 2.6.11 kernel to get the GTXP 7.1 card to work (with tv-card)
then I would be very grateful.

To me its not a very big issue if I need sound or not but I get annoyed knowing that I have
two kernels where each supports one of the hardware but not both.

Here is the output of lspci
************************************************
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset Host Bridge (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB/EB/ER Hub interface to PCI Bridge (rev 05)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 05)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801BA IDE U100 (rev 05)
00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #1) (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM SMBus (rev 05)
00:1f.4 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #2) (rev 05)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV25 [GeForce4 Ti 4400] (rev a2)
02:01.0 Multimedia audio controller: Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24 [CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator] (rev 01)
02:02.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant: Unknown device 8800 (rev 03)
02:02.1 Multimedia controller: Conexant: Unknown device 8811 (rev 03)
02:03.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CM8738 (rev 10)
02:04.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
************************************************

Here is the output of lsmod
************************************************
Module Size Used by
wlan_wep 5760 1
snd_pcm_oss 49056 0
snd_mixer_oss 17920 3 snd_pcm_oss
intel_agp 20252 1
snd_cs46xx 83656 0
snd_rawmidi 19872 1 snd_cs46xx
snd_ac97_codec 75384 1 snd_cs46xx
tuner 21668 0
cx8800 26892 0
cx88xx 44692 1 cx8800
video_buf 17668 2 cx8800,cx88xx
btcx_risc 4104 2 cx8800,cx88xx
ath_pci 53536 0
ath_rate_onoe 7048 1 ath_pci
wlan 108252 4 wlan_wep,ath_pci,ath_rate_onoe
ath_hal 146768 2 ath_pci
agpgart 28968 1 intel_agp
************************************************

Help!?

Last edited by MFC; 03-12-2005 at 05:55 AM.
 
  


Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off



Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
M-Audio Sonica Theater six6 Linux - Hardware 0 05-11-2005 11:41 AM
Hercules Game Theater XP & MIDI (?) KimVette Linux - General 14 02-28-2005 06:09 PM
how can i get my game theater working? ntisoldtech Linux - Hardware 1 11-13-2004 10:04 PM
ALSA Kernel 2.6.7 and Slack10 and my game Theater stabile007 Linux - Newbie 2 07-28-2004 12:28 PM
Linux in the theater log General 13 11-02-2003 12:25 PM

LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Hardware

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 10:45 AM.

Main Menu
Advertisement
My LQ
Write for LQ
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute content, let us know.
Main Menu
Syndicate
RSS1  Latest Threads
RSS1  LQ News
Twitter: @linuxquestions
Open Source Consulting | Domain Registration