[TAG] playmidi plays silently

[sindi keesan]

On Tue, 31 May 2005, sindi keesan wrote:

> The author of awesfx steered me to the .tar.gz at www.alsa-project.org/~iwai.
>
> Version 5 includes ALSA and version 4 does not and it also does something 
> else differently which might be better with older cards.
>
> I just acquired a second Soundblaster Live, which also accepts sound fonts 
> using this same program.  Win98FE, which suddenly stopped booting with the 
> AWE64 ISA card (after I changed PCI ethernet cards and added MGA), boots with 
> this one but the driver needs SE not FE (which would imply they don't support 
> DOS).  Linux OSS worked perfectly (soundcore.o and emu1k10.o - ?) and this 
> PCI card also cured my problem of the DVD-ROM drive not finding a free DMA 
> and IRQ.

I have done some more experimenting on the ISA AWE cards.
I have a Vibra16 CT3930 which has jumpers (not pnp) and it is the only one 
that initializes AWE32 in DOS and plays AWE in DOS.  I have two CT3600s 
one of which is AWE32 and has 512K free RAM and the other SB32 without the 
free RAM, but all three cards have two SIMM slots (with 2x4MB) - one had a 
jumper to enable this RAM, the others did not.

The CT3600s and two AWE642 (4520) play awe in a DOS box under Win98, which 
means Windows is initializing the awe part.  They play all but AWE in 
plain DOS.  I have not yet tried the Vibra16 in linux with playmidi.

None of these cards needed sound banks loaded in DOS or Windows (unless 
Windows loads its own automatically) so I don't think that is my problem, 
I think it is initialization.

I got Creative's CTCU.ZIP (at the pipeline driver site) and played with it 
for a long time.  I was able to get both CT3600's working in a computer 
where they had conflicts by resetting the MPU IRQ and DMA with CTCU and 
then running CTCM.  The AWE32 retains these settings permanently, the SB32 
has to have them reset every time.  I also had to disable the gameport by 
running ctcu and ctcm (and possibly the IDE secondary controller) to get 
them to work - otherwise DIAGNOSE (SB16 - similar to CTCM but cannot 
disable things) cannot find a free address on one card or a free IRQ on 
the other card.  They both came set to MPU 300 and IRQ 10.  One is now 
IRQ5.  I can now use these cards in linux with the same settings that work 
in DOS, except for AWE, which works in neither despite being set 
(apparently) by CTCM (from ctpnp.cfg file, which I edited manually).

The two AWE64s refuse to permanently change their IRQ settings and 
Diagnose tells me IRQ5 is taken - by the card, somehow, perhaps for the 
second 32 voices?  I have not managed to disable whatever takes up IRQ5 
and they won't work at all on this computer but work on other computers. 
(One is lacking FM synthesis, so who cares).  But they ought to work in 
linux where the PCI cards are more polite about grabbing IRQs, if I can 
get AWE initialized, probably with isapnp.

With the remodeled CT3600 AWE32 in this computer, Win98FE boots correctly 
and makes noises, and the DVD-ROM drive is no longer complaining about 
IRQs and DMA.  IRQ5 DMA 1 and 5.

I found sbldos.zip - DOS drivers for the PCI SB Live - not yet tried.
Win98FE has no drivers, SE does.


>
> So I am set to compile awesfx and test it on a card which I am certain does 
> not need isapnp because it is not isa, and then on an AWE32 with and without 
> initialization in DOS, to see if it really needs to be DOS or isapnp 
> initialized.  Supposedly the sb driver initializes the card itself. The mad16 
> definitely did so for the opti 931 and a cs4232 appeared to do the same (but 
> no sound came out).

I still have to try the Vibra16 CT3930, which is not pnp, in linux, with 
playmidi. (FIrst I had to run some experiments with video cards and 
mplayer and DVDs, which led me to conclude that you don't need more than 
4MB RAM, and that an ATI AGP card with 4MB and no heat sink, and to a 
lesser extent a PCI Voodoo with 16MB RAM and heat sink, works much better 
than one with 64MB RAM and a fan).

I was able to disable IDE controller and gameport with jumpers on this 
card.

> Ubuntu linux did not find our ISA ethernet or sound cards.
It did find the PCI card that played silently in my linux, and adjusted 
the volume so it works now (Trident).

> I will let you know when I succeed in getting sound from a midi file.
> Thanks for the help.
>
> keesan at sdf.lonestar.org
> SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
>
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keesan at sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org