No sound from old games using oss

pingu · 02-23-2014, 12:00 PM

I want to play my games smac, rt2 & civCTP (Yes they're old - but so am I! ;-) )
Problem is, I can't get sound to work. This is on my main computer running LinuxMint13 with Mate desktop, on laptop I have Mint10 w Mate and it works fine.
I have installed LMDE-201304 on main computer and here sound works - but game crashes instantly...
And it's only in these games sound doesn't work.

So I'm thinking about fixing the sound problem. The games are made for OSS which is not used any more.
I have tried each and every solution I've found out there, but with no success. Actually, I did this half a year ago so I can't really say exactly what I did, but it was about enabling alsa-oss, use pulseaudio instead, install oss-compat, enabling modules...
Today I don't even know what sound-systems I'm running - never could understand sound in Linux, I *am* a sys-admin but sound just seems so messy! I reinstalled pulseaudio today and tried 'padsp rt2' but no difference, message is "Warning: Unable to open audio: No available audio device"
I guess I'll have to start from scratch, but I don't know how to...
So please, could you tell me where to start, what I should install/remove, which sound-systems & sound-servers to mess around with, in order to get my old games working?

Some info:
Installed packages:
oss-compat, oss4-base, oss4-gtk,alsa-base, alsa-oss, pulseaudio, pulseaudio-esound-compat, esound-common
Jack is not installed, can't remember deinstalling it but maybe I did. It should be there shouldn't it?

Code:

# lspci -vvv |grep Audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD Audio Controller
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)

The 2 soundcards listed are: one actual soundcard (integrated), one NVIDIA VGA with HDMI.
I have connected both integrated & HDMI to speakers.

Code:

# sudo modprobe snd-pcm-oss
FATAL: Module snd_pcm_oss not found.

Code:

# alsaplayer CD1\ -\ 01\ -\ The\ Monkees\ -\ Pleasant\ Valley\ Sunday.mp3 
Failed to load output plugin "alsa". Trying defaults.
error opening /dev/dsp
Failed to initialize plugin!
/usr/lib/alsaplayer/output/liboss_out.so failed to load
NOTE: THIS IS THE NULL PLUGIN.      YOU WILL NOT HEAR SOUND!!

Code:

Mixer shows 3 "units" (?) "Realtek ALC1200 (OSS mixer)
HDA NVidia (Alsa mixer)
HDA Intel (Alsa mixer)
All three gives test sound

Andy Alt · 02-24-2014, 06:09 AM

I like to install pavucontrol when using pulseaudio.

Quote:

Overview

PulseAudio Volume Control (pavucontrol) is a simple GTK based volume control tool ("mixer") for the PulseAudio sound server. In contrast to classic mixer tools this one allows you to control both the volume of hardware devices and of each playback stream separately.

Not that I think it's likely to fix your problem, but there's a chance it may help you troubleshoot at some point?

pingu · 04-03-2014, 12:08 PM

Back again, have tried soo many things now.
"pavucontrol" gives me possibilities to set various things, but nothing gives me sound.

One tip I got was to install OSS4 from source, but reading the instructions tells me I have to deinstall every other sound "thingie" (alsa, oss, pulseaudio...).
I don't want to do that, I believe if I do there will be no sound from any other apps.(?)

Is there really no way to get sound playing from old games like CivCTP, Alpha Centauri, Railroad Tycoon?

Andy Alt · 04-16-2014, 01:23 AM

I don't see any mention of uninstalling other sound apps:

Building OSSv4 from source