Is this soundcard compatible on Debian?

sienarot · 03-08-2003, 12:59 PM

Hi all!

I was thinking about picking up a couple of these sound cards since they're relatively cheap and I haven't really heard anything bad about them. My only concern is whether they're supported on Debian or not. Any ideas?

http://www.aopen.com/products/sound/aw850.htm

cuckoopint · 03-08-2003, 01:11 PM

'Debian', or any other distro, does not support a hardware, per se.

What you should do is check if there is a driver for the card (ie. kernel) or if ALSA supports it.

crichards · 03-08-2003, 01:32 PM

I checked the kernel and ALSA, and I can't find support for your card.

HOWEVER, what a company says they use for a chip is not always what they actually use. For example, my card is a Philips sound card, and the box says it uses a Philips chipset. Both Windows and Linux say its a Maestro3, and it works as a Maestro3.

Most cards work in Linux. Only a few don't. Guaranteed to work are ones from the major manufacturers.

Oh, and my card was only $30. Its cheap and works great. Creative cards also work well.

fancypiper · 03-08-2003, 01:37 PM

I think some AOpen cards are supported. See these:

Hardware compatability HOWTO - soundcards
Alan Cox's OSS page
ALSA
Linux Sound HOWTO

sienarot · 03-08-2003, 01:37 PM

Thanks for the quick replies guys! Yeah, I just checked ALSA as well. I'm wondering if I should just pick it up anyways. It's only $27CAN...

cuckoopint · 03-08-2003, 03:10 PM

well,
http://www.aopen.com/tech/download/sound/default.htm
seems to show that most of these cards have linux support (but not this one?)

maybe this is a new card that just hasn't got any drivers yet...also this is their (official?) site...maybe it just has not been informed yet.

from the link you supplied, this caught my eye.

Quote:

# DOS Legacy Mode Support:
Support DOS compatible modes: DDMA under Windows 95/98
OPL3, MP3, Sound Blaster Pro & Windows Sound System compatible (Sound Blaster: Copyright and trademark are owned by Creative Inc.)

does this mean you can use a generic creative driver in linux?
not sure, but worth looking into.

sienarot · 03-08-2003, 04:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by cuckoopint
well,
http://www.aopen.com/tech/download/sound/default.htm
seems to show that most of these cards have linux support (but not this one?)

maybe this is a new card that just hasn't got any drivers yet...also this is their (official?) site...maybe it just has not been informed yet.

Yeah, that's what I was wondering about at first. It seemed like a lot of their older cards had linux support, but I could never seem to find anything about this one particular card.

Quote:

from the link you supplied, this caught my eye.

does this mean you can use a generic creative driver in linux?
not sure, but worth looking into.

Yeah, I noticed that too. I'll have to check that out (as a last resort) should I decide to get the sound card.