puppy doesn't bark

[stopthecar]

Hi all,

I'm new to Puppy (and the whole Linux scene).

I'm setting up Puppy 4.0 on an old laptop using the live CD

After some tuning everything works fine. Expect I have no sound at all.

When I run the Alsa Sound Wizard Puppy says :
"No supported PnP or PCI card found".

Then I can probe legacy ISA sound cards.

Then I chose sb8 Sound Blaster Pro (acording to the manual of the laptop there is an sound blaster pro on board).

Puppy then try's all the DMA and IRQ combo's

After that puppy changes my modprobe.conf with snd-op13sa2

But when puppy tries to play a sample : I hear nothing
and I get a message that the ALSA mixer is ready to use.

but when playing something using the alsa mixer or some other multimediaplayer I get no sound at all.

Anyone who can help me ?

[pcdoctor]

I'm having the same problem. This sound card works with DSL but I'd much, much, much rather use Puppy. Puppy is so much more polished than DSL it's not funny. I'm prepping this pc for my 10 year old cousin. He played around with it last night and he was happy. I'm just trying to put the finishing touches on this old desktop. I'll post back with more info later on today so you can see what kind sound card I have.

"aplay -l" results:
aplay: device_list:204: no soundcards found...

I typed "alsaconfig" in the terminal window and I get "command not found"
Typed "alsaconf" and got the configuration wizard but I can't hear any sound.
I ran the audio configuration wizard after installing puppy on the hard drive but my sound card doesn't have sound.
I'm running it again and will post what it says.

No support Pnp or PCI card found
Would you like to probe legacy ISA sound cards/chips?
Yes
Please select the drivers to probe:
I leave all drivers checked and select OK
Shall I try all possible DMA and IRQ combinations?
Yes
Probing opl3sa2
Configuring snd-opl3sa2
Do you want to modify /etc/modprobe.conf?
Yes
OK, sound driver is configured
Yes
Starting sound driver: snd-opl3sa2


When dsl was installed on this same pc it used a sound blaster driver: sb
I'll run the audio configuration again and make sure only the sound blaster option is checked.
By the way, this is an old pc with an AMD K62/300 and 256mb. It's a mini tower and it only have 3 pci slots. The pci slots are filled by: video, network and usb. The only way I could install a pci sound card is if I remove the pci video and install an isa video. Of course the sound card is an isa card. I took the card out but couldnt' read the chipset very well.
I tried snd-sb8 for my sound card and no sound
I tried snd-sb16 for my sound card and no sound
I'll removed the sound card again and see if I can see what chipset is on it.
I'm going to boot with a dsl cd.
dsl system stats says:
soundblaster pnp cards found (this is not a creative labs sound card)
ISAPnP reports i/o 0x220, irq 7, dma 3

[Trobin]

try running alsaconfig in a terminal window.

[stopthecar]

"aplay -l" results:
aplay: device_list:204: no soundcards found...

Same here. Puppy is great but this sound thing is driving me nuts.

try running alsaconfig in a terminal window.

Probably a stupid question but "How do you do that ?"

[pcdoctor]

"aplay -l" results:
aplay: device_list:204: no soundcards found...

Same here. Puppy is great but this sound thing is driving me nuts.

try running alsaconfig in a terminal window.

Probably a stupid question but "How do you do that ?"

I had to type "alsaconf" in the terminal window to run the audio configuration wizard.

[stopthecar]

That works, but you could also run the sound wizard from the menu.

Menu -> Setup -> Alsa sound Wizard.

Anyhow the result is the same.

[jemdem]

yeah same problem for me..

[sideburns]

I had the same problem; the "wizard" always picked the first choice on the list. I finally found by experiment that you can use the mouse to uncheck all the options except the one you want, and force it to try the right one. HTH, HAND.

[jukingeo]

"aplay -l" results:
aplay: device_list:204: no soundcards found...

Same here. Puppy is great but this sound thing is driving me nuts.

It isn't totally Puppy's fault, but it is Linux in general. Linux has terrible sound support. Much of it just doesn't work.

I have tried four devices and thusfar only the Sound Blaster Live MOSTLY works in all the Linux distributions I tried.

The Sound Blaster X-Fi can be "forced" to work in Ubuntu Hardy (it works in Gutsy too), and I had pretty good results there.

As of now I have an Echo Mona sound device. This sound device is SUPPOSED to be supported by Linux. However, Puppy recognizes the card, but no sound. Ubuntu doesn't even recognize the card.

I tried to follow four different guides to get this sound card to work in my Linux distributions to no avail.

I am speaking to the developer of the ALSA driver for my Mona device, but things are SLOW going.

What I am getting at is to prepare you for a very rough road trying to get sound working in Linux.

There are a handful of cards that are known to work without major setup headaches, but I have not tried them as of yet, with the exception of the Soundblaster Live.

Of course my application of using Linux for a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), is very sound in/out intensive, so a regular SB Live will not do. I have heard that the M-Audio Delta line is automatically recognized by most Linux distributions. I don't consider M-Audio very high end (for use in a serious pro DAW application), but then again, then next rung up that is recognized automatically are the cards made by RME. However, these cards are VERY expensive. Both M-Audio and RME support their products via a Linux driver, so that is a big help. Again, I have not tried these cards as of yet, but there have been many success stories.

With onboard computer sound, I have had luck with SoundMAX. All of the Dell machines I have at my job use SoundMAX and these on-board sound devices are automagically detected by Linux and I have had no problems using them.

On-Board sound issues are another matter to deal with. Fortunately most of my machines I can pull the sound card out of and replace it. If you have a desktop machine and your on-board sound doesn't work, you can turn it off and install an SB Live instead.

All in all, I hate to be the harbinger of bad news, but I am 4 months using 3 different Linux distributions now (Ubuntu Studio, Puppy, Dynebolic), and I have yet to find a "studio based" sound device that works.

I consider myself to have an above average understanding of computer operation and I was able to handle most issues with Linux through the associated distributions on-line forum support, but I will say that while other issues were solved in a couple of messages, my sound problems are on-going.

Sound is probably the worst issue you will face when dealing with Linux.

As of now I am still using Windows XP for my DAW (sound intensive) applications as well as certain games. However, I am using mostly Ubuntu and Puppy for regular tasks such as emailing/internet surfing and any game that I want to play that I don't require sound.

So, I am not going to sugarcoat it. Be prepared to have a very silent world in Linux for a very long time.

Geo

[palden]

Hey Folks, the Sound Card VIA1617A works under puppy Linux and Ubuntu but not with Teenpup 2008.
Tried the Sound Wizard. Not sure what else is left to be done. Any suggestions? Thanks Pal

[lubemnky]

Greetings all, I seem to be having the same difficulty as other in that my sb8 onboard isn't getting picked up by alsa now that
i have upgraded to 4.10. I booted in ram from 2.16 and got sound up and working and then copied the modprobe.conf file and rc.d/rc.d.alsa.start files to usb drive hoping to just swap the files but they look totally different in 4.10, so, now I'm stuck. I should add that 4.10 loads sb-16 into alsa but It doesn.t work and when I force sb-8 it says no device found.

[palden]

Hey Folks, the Sound Card VIA1617A works under puppy Linux and Ubuntu but not with Teenpup 2008.
Tried the Sound Wizard. Not sure what else is left to be done. Any suggestions? Thanks Pal

Ahh, my solution is so simple i wonder if this should here. During and after booting, if there is this strange buzzing sound, then that means there is a fault when initializing it or something. Just reboot the computer till it gets right. Normaily one reboot should do. (Tune up the volume and there should be no buzzing sound during and after booting up.) Though still sound problem but at least this gets (SOLVED) because there is a solution: Reboot. Hope this helps. Pal