alsa vs orinoco
 

Ok, here's one for the books.

I have installed a SoundBlaster 24-Live on an old Compaq Deskpro (PII 350 MHz). The desktop was connecting to a wireless network through a Linksys PCI card, using the orinoco_pci driver. Everything was working great before installing the soundcard. After I installed it the wireless card stopped being able to connect to the internet. It was able to get an IP address from the wireless router, it even pings ok, but Firefox and Konqueror refuse to go to websites. I shut down ALSA, removed the module for the sound card and presto, the wireless card starts working again. The alsa module is snd_ca0106.

I checked the io and interrupt info on /proc and I noticed that the sound card has IRQ 11 while the wifi card has IRQ 10. Oddly enough, the sound card shares the IRQ with the onboard (wired) ethernet card, but when I try to get online through the wired card everything is just peachy. Even though they're sharing an IRQ. Naturally I would prefer to solve this problem by just wiring the thing, but they owner of the PC insists they want the desktop wireless.

This PC is using Xandros with a 2.6 kernel and the latest ALSA headers and drivers from the apt tree. dmesg gives no useful information that I can see. This problem is pretty much reproducible everytime by simply enabling and loading the sound card driver.

So the question is how do I fix it? Is this a problem with the alsa headers or with the driver itself? Perhaps even with the sound card? I should mention that the sound card works flawlessly, though with some breakup in sound, and there is no noticeable dropoff in sound quality when I try to go online. If I try to install a different sound card will it play nice with the wifi card or is there no way to know? Anyone else experienced this? What is a good linux compatible off-the-shelf sound card I can use that will play nice with the wifi card?

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thank you.

Use Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. Its better and more reliable than Creative Labs sound cards. Use a PCI wired card with a wired to wireless bridge. The bridge will use the power from the card, so no external power source is needed. Also the bridge will be very, very easy to configure.

People these days always want to be part of the fad which can be dangerous at times. Wireless networking is one dangerous setup if people do not know the consequences. I suggest telling the PC owner about the consequences.

I've informed them about the security risks and whatnot. They just want to be able to connect this PC to the internet when it is one story below the DSL modem. You know how stubborn people unfamiliar with technology but enthusiasts of it can be.

I'm not clear about the "wired to wireless bridge". Thanks.

For wired to wireless bridges, have a look:

Linksys WET11
Linksys WET54G
Linksys WET54GS5

If they have extra pairs of telephone wires, they could just use the extra pairs of telephone cable to reach the level where the broadband internet connection is located. Also the power-lines can also be used. The speed of phone-line or power-line is about the same as wireless networking. The price is about the same and the security risk is much, much lower.

That is very good to know. I'll pass that info on. Thanks!

I take it there is no way to resolve the conflict between both cards then?