I am working with the SLAX liveCD. It seems like slackware is correctly recognizing both the Brooktree tv tuner(ATI TV Wonder) and the Sis onboard sound. However, the Brooktree chip is set up as the primary sound card.

So when kde boots up, I get a message

/dev/dsp can't be opened (No such file or directory)

I actually do get sound, but only from the line in of the onboard sound, which at the moment, is hooked to a pass-through cable from the tv card.

So my onboard sound is set up and working, but kde, mplayer, and noatun apparently are trying to output sound to the tv card rather than the onboard sound.

Does anyone have any ideas?

One issue, of course, is that I cannot fix things through rc.d or modules.conf, since it's a liveCD and those files don't get saved.

Thanks,
Lee

Hrm...

Since I've never used the SLAX Live CD, I'll just through a couple things out here.

Try doing a lsmod and look for btaudio, IIRC. If it's loaded, rmmod it and then load your soundcard driver with modprobe. That should allow the sound card to grab dsp. This is assuming that this LiveCD is using a dynamic /dev

If the /dev seems to be a static one (i.e. there are nodes for devices which do not exist) then check to see if /dev/dsp is really a symlink to the first sound card. If it's just a link, just rm /dev/dsp and do a 'ln -s /dev/<correct dev node> /dev/dsp' That will direct the pcm output to the proper device.

I've had a similar thing happen to me on a Slack 9.0 install, hotplug was loading btaudio.o before my soundcard. I went to /etc/hotplug/blacklist and added btaudio.o to the list. Problem solved, but seeing as you're on a LiveCD. doing the unload and reload might be the best/easiest way to go.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the help.

So, no btaudio in lsmod:
Module Size Used by Not tainted
snd-pcm-oss 37668 0 (unused)
snd-mixer-oss 12400 0 [snd-pcm-oss]
lp 6820 0 (autoclean) (unused)
parport 23400 0 (autoclean) [lp]
usb-storage 66336 1
usb-ohci 19048 0 (unused)
usbcore 59468 1 [usb-storage usb-ohci]
snd-intel8x0 18536 1
snd-ac97-codec 43404 0 [snd-intel8x0]
gameport 1420 0 [snd-intel8x0]
snd-mpu401-uart 3216 0 [snd-intel8x0]
snd-rawmidi 12768 0 [snd-mpu401-uart]
snd-seq-device 3888 0 [snd-rawmidi]
sis900 12396 1
crc32 2880 0 [sis900]
tuner 10248 1 (autoclean)
bttv 94816 0 (unused)
i2c-algo-bit 7144 1 [bttv]
i2c-core 12836 0 [tuner bttv i2c-algo-bit]
videodev 5984 2 [bttv]
snd-bt87x 5060 1
snd-pcm 56260 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-intel8x0 snd-bt87x]
snd-timer 13572 0 [snd-pcm]
snd 31012 2 [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-intel8x0 snd-ac97-codec snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-bt87x snd-pcm snd-timer]
soundcore 3524 8 [bttv snd]
snd-page-alloc 6356 0 [snd-intel8x0 snd-bt87x snd-pcm]
pcmcia_core 39972 0
agpgart 44036 0 (unused)

ovl 69888 2
file_io 3200 0 [ovl]
klists 10728 443 [ovl]
ntfs 51360 2 (autoclean)
ide-scsi 9488 0

It seems that /dev/dsp is indeed a symlink to /dev/sound/dsp

lr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 9 Mar 15 13:15 dsp -> sound/dsp

At the moment, the line in is piped to the line out of the sound card. But PCM can't get control. If that makes sense.

Thanks again for any thoughts.