I just installed Slackware 8.1 on my Thinkpad i1400. The install went great except for a little fighting with lilo. I then went to install the alsa drivers for my sound card (opl3sa2) and followed the directions here.

Now, when I try to play an mp3 with amp or start up KDE the system completely locks up. I'm assuming KDE is trying to play a sound on startup.

I looked in /var/log/syslog but didn't see anything that stood out (I'll insert it at the end of this message.)

I was able to get this to work with Debian woody by following the same instructions that I linked to above. Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks,
Andrew

Jan 17 11:21:30 skyy kernel: Linux version 2.4.18 (root@midas) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #4 Fri May 31 01:25:31 PDT 2002
Jan 17 11:21:30 skyy kernel: BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
Jan 17 11:21:30 skyy kernel: BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
Jan 17 11:21:30 skyy kernel: BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
Jan 17 11:21:30 skyy kernel: BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000000bff0000 (usable)
Jan 17 11:21:30 skyy kernel: BIOS-e820: 000000000bff0000 - 000000000bff8000 (ACPI data)
Jan 17 11:21:30 skyy kernel: BIOS-e820: 000000000bff8000 - 000000000c000000 (ACPI NVS)
Jan 17 11:21:30 skyy kernel: On node 0 totalpages: 49136
Jan 17 11:21:30 skyy kernel: zone(0): 4096 pages.
Jan 17 11:21:30 skyy kernel: zone(1): 45040 pages.
Jan 17 11:21:30 skyy kernel: zone(2): 0 pages.
Jan 17 11:21:30 skyy kernel: Kernel command line: auto BOOT_IMAGE=Linux ro root=301
Jan 17 11:21:31 skyy kernel: Detected 299.949 MHz processor.
Jan 17 11:21:31 skyy kernel: Console: colour dummy device 80x25
Jan 17 11:21:31 skyy kernel: Calibrating delay loop... 598.01 BogoMIPS
Jan 17 11:21:31 skyy kernel: Memory: 190580k/196544k available (1536k kernel code, 5576k reserved, 426k data, 228k init, 0k highmem)
Jan 17 11:21:31 skyy kernel: Dentry-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Jan 17 11:21:31 skyy kernel: Inode-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Jan 17 11:21:31 skyy kernel: Mount-cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
Jan 17 11:21:31 skyy kernel: Buffer-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
Jan 17 11:21:31 skyy kernel: Page-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Jan 17 11:21:32 skyy kernel: CPU: Intel Mobile Pentium MMX stepping 02
Jan 17 11:21:32 skyy kernel: POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Jan 17 11:21:32 skyy kernel: mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
Jan 17 11:21:32 skyy kernel: mtrr: detected mtrr type: none
Jan 17 11:21:32 skyy kernel: PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xf0200, last bus=0
Jan 17 11:21:33 skyy kernel: PCI: Using configuration type 1
Jan 17 11:21:33 skyy kernel: PCI: Probing PCI hardware
Jan 17 11:21:33 skyy kernel: Initializing RT netlink socket
Jan 17 11:21:33 skyy kernel: Starting kswapd
Jan 17 11:21:34 skyy kernel: Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 128x48
Jan 17 11:21:34 skyy kernel: pty: 512 Unix98 ptys configured
Jan 17 11:21:35 skyy kernel: block: 128 slots per queue, batch=32
Jan 17 11:21:35 skyy kernel: RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 7777K size 1024 blocksize
Jan 17 11:21:35 skyy kernel: ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
Jan 17 11:21:35 skyy kernel: ALI15X3: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 58
Jan 17 11:21:35 skyy kernel: ALI15X3: chipset revision 32
Jan 17 11:21:36 skyy kernel: ALI15X3: not 100%% native mode: will probe irqs later
Jan 17 11:21:36 skyy kernel: ide0: BM-DMA at 0x6090-0x6097, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbio
Jan 17 11:21:36 skyy kernel: ide1: BM-DMA at 0x6098-0x609f, BIOS settings: hdcio, hddio
Jan 17 11:21:36 skyy kernel: hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
Jan 17 11:21:36 skyy kernel: ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
Jan 17 11:21:36 skyy kernel: hdc: SANYO CRD-S372BVA, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
Jan 17 11:21:36 skyy kernel: ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
Jan 17 11:21:36 skyy kernel: ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
Jan 17 11:21:36 skyy kernel: hdc: ATAPI 24X CD-ROM drive, 256kB Cache
Jan 17 11:21:37 skyy kernel: ide-floppy driver 0.97.sv
Jan 17 11:21:37 skyy kernel: ide-floppy driver 0.97.sv
Jan 17 11:21:37 skyy kernel: request_module[scsi_hostadapter]: Root fs not mounted
Jan 17 11:21:38 skyy last message repeated 2 times
Jan 17 11:21:38 skyy kernel: 8regs : 326.400 MB/sec
Jan 17 11:21:38 skyy kernel: 32regs : 291.200 MB/sec
Jan 17 11:21:38 skyy kernel: pII_mmx : 451.200 MB/sec
Jan 17 11:21:38 skyy kernel: p5_mmx : 528.400 MB/sec
Jan 17 11:21:38 skyy kernel: raid5: using function: p5_mmx (528.400 MB/sec)
Jan 17 11:21:39 skyy kernel: IP: routing cache hash table of 1024 buckets, 8Kbytes
Jan 17 11:21:39 skyy kernel: TCP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 16384)
Jan 17 11:21:40 skyy kernel: VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
Jan 17 11:21:40 skyy kernel: Freeing unused kernel memory: 228k freed

What version of the ALSA drivers are you using? And after you boot / init the soundcard does:

cat /proc/asound/cards

list an installed device?

I was trying this with the latest version, 0.9.0rc6. However I tried something else when I realized that the drivers for this card are actually included with Slackware.

I reinstalled Slackware and ran /sbin/modprobe opl3sa2. When I ran amp from the command line everything worked fine although at a really low volume. However, I can't get into KDE. If I reboot so the sound drivers aren't loaded KDE works find except it gives the error:

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.

I tried fvwm2 with the sound drivers loaded and that works fine.

Just tried Gnome and I can login but playing an mp3 locks things up again.

So your sound card works fine in shell mode (ie no gui mode) but not in gui mode right?

Just running modprobe isn't sufficient to get your card working across the board. To my knowledge some of the apps in the various guis want to interface with a sound device using an OSS standard.

During the ALSA install, you should have seen portions relating to that. Not doing those instructions could be the source of your problems.

Running this command:

cat /proc/asound/cards

Should show your card if it is properly installed from an ALSA standpoint.

Ruunning this command:

alsamixer

is the best way to set the mixer levels using the ALSA drivers, as some of the other mixers don't read all the mixing channels in...

-- Another thing to try.... reinstall use the 'stable' drivers. The install instructions are slightly different, but they worked for me. I have sound in just the bash shell and any of the various gui desktops and window managers... albiet with a Yamaha chip but I think the ALSA drivers are well written across all chips.