okay, i have seen a lot of 'C-Media doesn't work in RH8' posts, but not a single 'C-Media doesn't work in slack' post.

good.

i have a c-media sound card and it doesn't play cds in red hat. it plays mp3s fine, but not cds. that's not the problem.

i'm going to get slack 9 now it's out (am currently using slack 8.1) but to be honest, slack 8.1 doesn't seem to want to make my sound card work either. now i am not too hot on getting hardware to work to be honest, a friend of mine said all he did to get his c-media card to work was "# modprobe cmpci" but i tried that and it generates no errors, but sound still does not work. when trying to play an mp3 in xmms i get that message about not being able to open the mixer device et cetera.

so how do i get it to work in slack please? in simple terms, because i don't want to miss anything.

thanks in advance as always...

edit: do i need to get out my slack CD and use a different kernel?

A quick scan of the source file cmpci.c from the 2.4.20 kernel source produced a list of the following:

{ PCI_DEVICE_ID_CMEDIA_CM8338A, "CM8338A" },
{ PCI_DEVICE_ID_CMEDIA_CM8338B, "CM8338B" },
{ PCI_DEVICE_ID_CMEDIA_CM8738, "CM8738" },
{ PCI_DEVICE_ID_CMEDIA_CM8738B, "CM8738B" },

So I would think if your sound card is one of the above chipsets then it should work. Also, the 2.4.18 kernel source provided the same list. After loading the module, use the "dmesg" command and review the end of the listing to see what it detected and setup. After it is detected and setup then the rest should be the same for all sound cards (i.e. sym links, devices, permissions, etc.). If it is not detected, then you will need to seek a newer driver or attempt to hack the one available.

As far as playing audio CD's, it is very common today for the CD to be an IDE cdwriter type of drive that requires generic scsi support. This changes the device name on the unit from what the installation would normally setup. The symlink is /dev/cdrom and should point to the drive. It may be defaulted to /dev/hdd for an example, but needs to be changed to /dev/scd0 for a generic scsi CD device. As a result, most CD player apps might not be able to find the drive until the broken symlink is corrected.

In regard to your kernel question, I would think it is not a real issue unless you are running a custom kernel. Then for testing purposes you might want to go back to a stock kernel/modules to get it working. Then switch to your custom kernel. If it doesn't work then you know the problem is in your custom kernel.

I hope that you find the info to be of some assistance.

thank you.

i will try dmesg when i reboot into slackware next (using rh8 now)

the cd playing in red hat is not a cd drive problem. kscd plays the CDs fine, but no sound comes through, but xmms will play mp3s no problem (and xmms will play cds too, with no sound) - anyway, this seems to be a 'known' bug in RH8 but i am unconcerned with it if i can get the c-Media card working in slackware

ok, all i needed to do was add '/sbin/modprobe cmpci' to the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.M and then 'chmod 777' /dev/mixer and /dev/dsp