I am using Redhat Linux 8.0 with the kernel version 2.4.18-14 on AMD system. My board is of PCCHIPS M810DLU v7.5c.The processor is AMD DURON 1800+. I have recently installed Linux and got problem with it. The linux doesn't detect my Soundcard which is of C-Media 9738s, it also does not detect my PCI soundcard ESS Maestro-3 (1980s). I have tried many thing but nothing. I have tried many commands like "lspci", "cat /proc/pci" and got error message like no such directory or file, no such command. I have checked that both are compatible with Redhat linux 8.0. Kindly please tell me what should I do? Please help me, please!.....

Could you post the output of the 'dmesg' command (run in a terminal)? It would help to know if the card is detected but the drivers aren't loading, or if it is not detected at all, and also dmesg might give some indication as to why.

Is this a 'clean' RH install? Did you set up your sound card(s) during the install? Have you upgraded anything since (like your kernel)? Is there any indication in the RH hardware manager that either of the cards exist? Is your BIOS set to use the onboard soundcard (as well as the PCI card), or do you have it turned off and use the PCI sound card instead?

You might try the 'sndconfig' command in a terminal (as root). It may or may not work, depending on what is installed on your system. You might also install the ALSA drivers for one or both of your cards (to be found at http://www.alsa-project.org).

I tried your command and the output of command of "dmesg" is as follow


Linux version 2.4.18-14 (bhcompile@astest.test.redhat.com) (gcc version 3.2 20020903 (Red Hat Linux 8.0 3.2-7)) #1 Wed Sep 4 12:13:11 EDT 2002
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000000eff0000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000eff0000 - 000000000eff8000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 000000000eff8000 - 000000000f000000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 00000000ffee0000 - 00000000fff00000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fffc0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
0MB HIGHMEM available.
239MB LOWMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 61424
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 57328 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: ro root=LABEL=/
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 1200.046 MHz processor.
Speakup v-1.00 CVS: Tue Jun 11 14:22:53 EDT 2002 : initialized
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 2383.03 BogoMIPS
Memory: 236992k/245696k available (1311k kernel code, 6400k reserved, 987k data, 212k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
ramfs: mounted with options: <defaults>
ramfs: max_pages=29863 max_file_pages=0 max_inodes=0 max_dentries=29863
Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
CPU: Before vendor init, caps: 0383f9ff c1c3f9ff 00000000, vendor = 2
CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: After vendor init, caps: 0383f9ff c1c3f9ff 00000000 00000000
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPU: After generic, caps: 0383f9ff c1c3f9ff 00000000 00000000
CPU: Common caps: 0383f9ff c1c3f9ff 00000000 00000000
CPU: AMD Duron(tm) stepping 01
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfdb01, last bus=2
PCI: System does not support PCI
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
speakup: initialized device: /dev/synth, node (MAJOR 10, MINOR 25)
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.16)
Starting kswapd
VFS: Diskquotas version dquot_6.5.0 initialized
pty: 2048 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI ISAPNP enabled
ttyS0 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS1 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10e
block: 448 slots per queue, batch=112
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 50MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
hda: ST340015A, ATA DISK drive
hdc: SAMSUNG CD-ROM SC-152A, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM 52XS, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: 78165360 sectors (40021 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=4865/255/63
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 hda9 >
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
NET4: Frame Diverter 0.46
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 2048 buckets, 16Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 32768)
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Freeing initrd memory: 127k freed
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 212k freed
spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.18, 14 May 2002 on ide0(3,8), internal journal
Adding Swap: 489940k swap-space (priority -1)
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.18, 14 May 2002 on ide0(3,7), internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
hdc: driver not present
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
hdd: driver not present
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
hdd: driver not present
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
hdc: driver not present


Can you tell me what is the problem?
That is surely clean Redhat Install
The Installation setup didn't give me any option for settingup Soundcard.
I did not Upgraded my kernel
The soundcard detection tool replied me that "no soundcard detected"
The both soundcard performs excellent in windows.
I also Disabled My O/B soundcard but it did not detected PCI soundcard
I tried sndconfig in the Terminal the out put is as follow
sndconfig: no such command

Please any body help me what should i do?please............

This is what I find of concern:
..especially since I don't see any other PCI devices being detected...

Do you have any other PCI cards in your system?

Anyway, a search of the error "PCI: System does not support PCI" in Google returns a thread that says adding "pci=bios" fixed the error for the person asking about it.

Better still, this RedHat bug report clearly says that this problem is reproducible under RedHat 8, and explains how to add the pci=bios option to your configuration so that your PCI bus will be detected and so thus your sound card.

Let us know if it works for you.

I read your comments and thank you very much
I will search about this bug.

But the main problem is that why my built-in soundcard wasn't detected by Linux 8.0? Another problem is that the Linux also doesn't detect my CNR Modem which is of PCTel. What should I do for this?

Both your onboard sound card and your modem are considered PCI devices. So enabling the system to detect PCI devices by adding pci=bios to your boot options should hopefully solve the problem for all devices.

Respected Dear Motub,
I can not thanks you
You solved my whole problem
I edit my /etc/grub.conf and on next boot the system detected whole devices. You have done a great Job for me.
The recent output of "lspci" command is as follow


00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 740 Host (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5591/5592 AGP
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 85C503/5513 (rev 25)
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
00:02.6 Modem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 56k Winmodem (Smart Link HAMR5600 compatible) (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 7001 (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 7001 (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]: Unknown device 7002
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 10/100 Ethernet (rev 90)
00:09.0 Multimedia audio controller: ESS Technology ES1983S Maestro-3i PCI Audio Accelerator
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]: Unknown device 6325


Thanks alot.

My Onboard sound card has also detected
When I got that output it was Disabled from Bios
You please kindly tell me how can I switch over to one another
I mean I only able to use On Board soundcard.
The PCI one is detected but doesn't work

But I am still Having Problems

Whenever i tried to connect to net The Linux said that the modem is ready But after that it said "initializing modem" and stop there
Second The soundcard doesn't play any sound except "test sound" in the soundcard detection menu
Now what should I do?

My modem is on COM 3 port according to Windows. And I tried ttyS1, ttyS2 and ttyS3 on Linux for the modem port
On ttyS2 and ttyS3 it said that Modem is Busy
But on ttyS1 it said that Modem is ready to use

Probably you should reconfigure the modem so that it uses ttS1, or so that ttyS1 points to the same serial port that the modem is connected to. I don't have a modem of any stripe, but this Red Hat page seems to explain how to configure one under RH 8.

And as far as the sound card not playing sounds goes, you maybe should try the instructions on this RedHat 8 documentation page

Well I will Try to Enable Sound server at Star-up
But i Tried with Modem to configure it but did not get sucess
Does CNR Modems supported by LINUX?
and Does PCtel modems support LINUX.

The modem is detected, but does it have drivers loaded? It's a winmodem, so you might want to read up on getting one to work:

Linmodems.org
The Unofficial PCTel Linux Driver page
I finaly got my PcTel hsp56 mr modem to work
Lucent AMR modem listed as an Intel AC'97 - Smart Link Modems

Sorry, that was my mistake, I saw it detected but didn't realize that the drivers probably weren't there.

Can You please explain me how can I switch between Soundcards? I mean The Linux only uses my O/B soundcard and how can I switch over to ESS Maestro-3 (PCI SOUNDCARD).