c-media 8738 and redhat 9
 

hey all how's it going? I an new to linux, I had some trouble in the past with mplayer not player videos but I have that straightened out now. However I am now have some problems with my asus a7m266 on board c-media sound card. When I try to do a auto dection for my sound card. I recieve this message: Automatic detection of the sound card did not work. Audio will not be available on the system. Please click OK to continue. So I tried to Dl the cm8738 drivers from the cmedia site, but I do not know how to install or extract the files......

any help would be appc.

thanks Jason

I am not familiar with red hat, but I have a cmedia 8738 audio chip also on my asus cusi-fx. The drivers from cmedia are for older kernels, newer kernels have support built in as modules or static (i recommend static). I run linux kernel 2.4.22 and never had to use the cmedia drivers. ( "uname -v" to view your kernel build) Works great, just recently hooked up and tested 4 speaker output option with success. Haven't gotten it to work with alsa yet, but it is possible, chip is oss I believe. So, you must compile a new kernel with support activated for chip to get it to work.

Recommended programs for cmedia 8738:
cmictl -- http://member.nifty.ne.jp/Breeze/sof...x/index-e.html
xmms
dbmixer --xmms plugin to handle mutiple xmms's (don't forget to run dbfsd before running dbmixer or hitting play on xmms while using this output plugin)
rezound --just neato

similar thread but for alsa -- http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=140821

Skitzo
 

Skitzo- thanks for the help I installed cmictl, but the sound is still not playing. I am not sure what else I have to do.

thanks Jason

To extract stuff the command "tar" should suffice but dump those dl's from cmedia anyway.

Some questions to narrow down the broken link in the chain from application to hardware;

1. Have you compiled a kernel yet?
Go to -- http://www.kernel.org/ -- and get the kernel tar ball for version 2.4.24 located here -- http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/ -- as linux-2.4.24.tar.bz2 (( -- http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kern...2.4.24.tar.bz2 -- )). There are more advanced kernels, but I haven't tried them yet on this computer with the cmedia 8783. Read the red hat documentation here -- http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...dularized.html -- . Looks like they are using 2.4.0 which you may have on your sys already, you may try using it, but I recommend you get the latest one (2.4.24) which should be still compatible with redhat 9.0 since the extra version numbers (24) are versions of 2.4.0 with patches and fixes already installed and stable. There is also and rpm for red hat containing the source -- http://mirrors.kernel.org/redhat/red....20-8.i386.rpm -- , I tried to take a look at the innards of the rpm but my regular compression prog failed and I don't have time right now to learn the rpm structure etc. so you are on your own with that one (hmm... the rpm is 37mb while the source tar ball is 32mb of 2.4.20, interesting). Now read or skim -- http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/README -- and -- http://www.tldp.org/LDP/lame/LAME/li...el-custom.html --- here is another -- http://www.tldp.org/linuxfocus/Engli...ticle252.shtml -- the best one probably would have been -- http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html -- but it is being reviewed at the time of this post. If you are unclear on a specific command, don't just type in whatever is on the "how to's", use the command "man <unclear command here>" and read the overviews to get a feel for what they do and where they do it. There may also be a kernel upgrade post in the redhat section of these forums, read that too. It may be a boring read if you aren't a card carrying geek, but when you go in to select the kernel options you will be glad you read everything and will probably need to read about the rest of your specific hardware setup once you find how much faster it may go if you set up the kernel right.

The specific cmedia 8738 is in the sound section a couple of lines down, in kernel 2.4.20 you may need to activate the experimental "code maturity" option for the cmedia stuff to appear (in 2.4.24 the driver is not experimental and thus I reccomend 2.4.22 or 2.4.24).

whew

2. Did cmictl find the device?

3. Give me the output of "uname -a" , ( from cli)

4. What program are you using to play sounds / music / etc.

4.5. Check the program's output plugin to make sure it is OSS compatible.

5. When do you get the error, at boot or during a program startup?

6. How do you boot? from loadlin, lilo, or grub?

I can't check my bios settings right now, but they may have something to do with this problem also. And, umm, this post should go into the hardware forum section. And I have posted to the other cmedia 8738 thread again, argh crosslinking.