just found some interesting things when trying to disable and reenable oss - typing the soundon command gave me
"Warning: Some of the devices failed to initialize.
See /usr/lib/oss/logs/soundon.log for more info."

looking in the log file, I found

OSS: IRQ17 is already in use by some other driver
that has allocated the IRQ exlusively for itself.
CMPCI: Can't allocate IRQ17
oss: Probing the hardware for CMedia CMI8738 failed.

00:13.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CM8738 (rev 10)
Subsystem: C-Media Electronics Inc: Unknown device 0005
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 17
I/O ports at c800 [size=256]
Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2

My sound card is the only thing on IRQ 17, as it says futher down in the log!! Does anyone know whats going on?

I cant change the IRQ seeing as it is onboard - the BIOS wont let me.

EDIT: is it possible that the util is seeing the soundcard as IRQ 17 at the same time that its seeing something else (ie the soundcard) reserved as IRQ 17???

What did you change in your config file? I think you can look at it again by typing "soundconf" as root in a console

I definitely selected Automatic Boot setup. Can't remember what Configuration options I selected...

As I mentioned, I was installing ALSA drivers from both Intel and ALSA prior to trying out OSS. Note that I couldn't get OSS working initially and it worked only after I did a re-install of Mandrake 10 and started playing with soundconf a couple of times... I got it to finally work by trial and error... unfortunately I did not document what I did.

This is the beauty of Linux :-) It's for people who want to feel/experience PAIN :-) Feels good once everything works though...

cyclo

is there anything I can pass to the kernel at startup to force an irq to a different port or anything?

ok then, I've given up on mandrake now.

Just ordered FC2 - takes too much time to download on a 56k

I'll be back if I can't get it working on fedora either

Sorry to hear you were not able to get it configured. Good luck with FC2... and let folks here (on this thread) know how it turns out. I myself want to know if the problem with onboard sound that some of us encountered is more of a Mandrake distro problem or a Linux one.

cyclo

Did ya try using OSS ?? I didn't read the other messages, but hopefully you did. I have the same sound card, and it works fine with OSS.

yeah I tried oss, but it wouldnt "soundon" properly - it didnt like the soundcard IRQ or something..

and what a surprise! with Fedora Core 2, it works first time

now my network card has gone again though :P

oh well, I'll use windows for that!

deviant, I think I finally nailed this oss thing if you are still interested. A while ago I downloaded and installed Mandrake's -15 kernel for my machine which is: linux-2.6.3-15mdk because of a new security advisory. I used Mandrake's control Panel which took care of the install and the adding of a new entry in LILO pointing to the new kernel which I could select at startup.

As expected, I lost sound again... This time though OSS won't install unlike before. I looked at the log and noticed the the install was recompiling oss using header files from "linux-2.6.3-15mdk-p3-smp-64GB" which exists in the \lib\modules\ directory... These directories contain the different binaries for the various kernels that Mandrake installed including the one I selected for downloading which is designed for Symetric Multiprocessing and can address up to 64 GB of memory, hence the "-p3-smp-64GB" suffix.

However, my source directory (/usr/src/) where the kernel source is stored does not contain the subdirectory "linux-2.6.3-15mdk-p3-smp-64GB". It contains the "linux-2.6.3-15mdk" which is the reason the compile was failing. As I am not familiar with aliasing directories yet and I was in a hurry so I just logged in as root and renamed the directory "/usr/src/linux-2.6.3-15mdk" to "/usr/src/linux-2.6.3-15mdk-p3-smp-64GB" then re-run ./oss-config.

Also, just to be sure, I changed the owner of /dev/dsp to myself instead of root. I got an error but I got sound back after I rebooted the PC.

Problem is I had to spend a few more hours to get 3d running again as the old nvidia GeForce FX video driver that came with Mandrake no longer worked. I had to download the newest drivers from nVidia, fiddle with security permissions and so on... bottom line, everything is working again. Hopefully Mandrake won't be compelled to release another Kernel update anytime soon :-)

If I find the time, I am also thinking the proper way to get the Alsa working is to first un-install the existing modules and libraries (using uninstall packages in Mandrake control panel), then manually compile and install those from the manufacturer (Intel in my case) or from ALSA.

cyclo

I'll try that, as I still have mandrake on my system for internet access.

I'll see what my /lib/modules dir tells me!

no still no sournd - I'm getting the same IRQ error as before.

Did you mess around with all the sliders in ALSA Mixer, I was not getting any sound with my Mandrake 10.0 on my newer PC and after installing Alsa Mixer and sliding the sliders up I was able to get sound. I know you are getting errors whereas I was not. Let us know what you find out.....

d-1

I cant even get the mixer up! It brings up an error message about no such device when I try to open any of the mixers

Have you tried to go to software management and go to remove software area and do a search for alsa and see if you see it there. If you do remove it and try to reinstall.

d-1

OK then, removed ALSA and reinstalled it. No change apart from having to reinstall most of KDE aswell!