AWE64 soundcard slackware 8.1 problem.
 

Hello all, I've just installed slackware 8.1 on my old dual pentium pro box. Only problem so far is no sound in KDE. I have recompiled the kernel to give the necessary ISApnp and sound blaster oss driver-

From the log:

Feb 24 21:33:17 sluggy kernel: isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
Feb 24 21:33:18 sluggy kernel: isapnp: SB audio device quirk - increasing port range
Feb 24 21:33:18 sluggy kernel: isapnp: AWE32 quirk - adding two ports
Feb 24 21:33:18 sluggy kernel: isapnp: Card 'Creative SB AWE64 PnP'
Feb 24 21:33:18 sluggy kernel: isapnp: 1 Plug & Play card detected total

So all seems ok there.

However when I start KDE 3 (as root) I get the message

Sound server informational message:
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device /dev/dsp can't be opened (no such device)
The sound server will continue using the null output device.

Greatfull for any help

Kevin.

It looks like the PnP is detecting the card. But I would think that the drivers should also be reporting something. Since you are running a custom kernel did you build the sb support as a module? Or builtin?

For the stock kernel the module would be "sb" if you wanted to boot the stock bare.i kernel and try to load the module and see if it is working.

Also, there is a doc in the kernel sources. It is the Documentation/sound/INSTALL.awe that might be of some assistance.

I've got a Slack box that is doing the same thing, the way I get mine to work is to remove the module and then reload it as root.

rmmod sb

modprobe sb

For some odd reason if I have the module load up from rc.modules or if I place it in rc.local, it won't load and I get similiar errors. If I load it up afterwards, it works fine. Doesn't bother me much since I rarely ever reboot this machine... but try that and see if it works for you.

Fixed now - thanks guys
 

I tried:

rmmod sb
modprobe sb

then I started up KDE, got no error message and the sound was working. So I looked at my kernel .config and sure enough the driver is in there but as a module so I recompiled, this time into the kernel. Now it all works great. I also get boot up messages from the sound driver where I was getting none before, so you were right there too.

Thanks for your very helpful posts guys.

Kevin