I have a Hercules Fortissimo 3 7.1 soundcard which i cannot get to function properly in any version of linux. I have tried both Red Hat 9 and Mandrake 9.2. In both of these i can get the sound to work perfectly for about ten minutes, after ten minutes the sound stops and will refuse to work until i restart. I cannot understand why it would work for a bit and then stop.

Any ideas?

I've been told the sound is good with these cards in general (I am buying one tomorrow since they have just hit australia recently). I was doing a little hunting around to ensure that it works under Linux and I found the following page on www.alsa-project.org.

http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc...&module=cs46xx

One of the posts here refers to a problem with the Fortissimo III 7.1 where the card fails and requires a reboot. It says to fix the problem, you need to enable the option external_amp=1 in /etc/modules.conf.

I am guessing you could specify this with a line like:

options snd-cs46xx external_amp=1

Anyway I hope this helps. As soon as I buy my fortissimo I will try this and see if it solves the problem. Also its always worth trying the latest ALSA version. I'll try it without the external_amp option for starters - I am running ALSA 1.02 so maybe that fixes the problem already.

-- Chris

The sound on the Fortissimo 3 7.1 is very good in my opinion.

I will give your suggestion a try and let you know how it goes, thanks for the help.

Well, got my fortissimo III and it seems to work well using Alsa 1.0.2c. I tried it with and without the external_amp=1 setting and it seems to work fine. At the moment I am running with the option set, and I have been happily listening to MP3s for about 3 hours now with no troubles.
Don't know if it makes a difference, but I am running Slackware 9.1.
Let me know how it goes...

-- Chris