SoundBlaster Live! under Linux?
Shrub writes in with this query:
"I know Creative is planning on writing Linux drivers,
but in the meantime.. has anyone managed to get a SoundBlaster
Live! card working in Linux? "
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Load in the following order:
soundcore, soundlow, sound, uart401, sb
It's three weeks already and still
"Linux (Coming Soon)"
What about sending some more feedback to these guys?
I mean, they could at least set up a page with the current status.
Dunno if this is important, but a recent article by www.3dai.com mentions Quake 2 being played under Linux on an SBLive...
For less than $20 at Frys you can buy a Sony 4 into 1 mini plug (walkman type) switch box. The unit is totally passive (no electricity).
That will solve your manual switching cables problem.
There is not complete support for any of the Creative PCI cards. There isn't any for the Live! and only basic for the PCI64/128...
/dev/dsp channel.
For the SB64/128, they are based on the Ensoniq 1370/1371 chipset. The have a 'simulated' four speaker, and only the front channel works. Also there is no midi support, you have to use Timidity to synthesize through a
You may see better support for these cards through 4Front but they haven't completed anything yet either.
Huh? What does this have to do with SBLive? The only "chipset supplier" for SBLive is E-mu, a company which Creative owns...
I always wonder about these new sound cards..
exactly how much better are these new cards compared the original sb16 or awe32?
I heard a rumor in November that someone leaked the programming info for the emu10k. I've been checking around, but I couldn't find said infos anywhere. Reverse-engineering time?
> So anyone know of a group working on drivers
> that will be free? (for us poor college
> students...)
Warez: it's a way of life for some.
I don't want to sound like a real newbie, but /var/log/secure?
how do you see the telnet, ftp, etc attempts to your machine? By looking through
Yeah, but it says MONTHS from alpha!
In the meantime, maybe the developer.s will finish the
binary only driver.
SB AWE 64 Value: if you can find it, it's the best.
Otherwise, I would go for a Yamaha..
While connected, run tail -f /var/log/messages in an xterm. /var/log/secure and /var/log/maillog (in case of imap attacks, for example) have info as well.
I've heard rumors that the binary-only drivers from Creative should be available really soon now; maybe by the end of this week! So stay tuned...
Excuse that... 4front doesn't go to the right page... it's actually www.opensound.com
Haven't you seen that page at 4front that says they are no longer involved in the free OSS version? They say Alan Cox in now in control.
Hmmm, just last year I almost bought 4front's product and they said buying the commercial version also supports the free OSS version. Thats not true any more.
Anyone know what happened?
Posted by Vympe:
Hi all,
I'm just about to put together a new computer. I've been considering which sound card to buy and I'm still somewhat clueless. I hear of problems with the Soundblaster PCI64 and PCI128, as well as the Live! Should I just stick with the old proved SB16?
Which sound card offers the best 'Linux value'? In other words, which modern sound cards are fully supported in Linux?
Thanks for the help!
The Diamond Monster MX300 is supposedly very close to the SB Live... I think it's the same chipset.
I believe I once heard that drivers for one would be extremely easy to make work for the other, so does anyone know of any advances toward a driver for the MX300?
I think the chipset is called the Vortex 3D but someone correct me here.
~Chris Carlin
So anyone know of a group working on drivers that will be free? (for us poor college students...)
~Chris Carlin
Really?
I keep hearing about how Diamond can release drastic updates to the hardware adding completely new features through the programmable chipset/chip....
I have to boot into DOS, load the setupsa.exe drivers to initialize it, and then use loadlin to boot into Linux. Even then the mixer doesn't work, so everything is really, really quiet.
I think Alan Cox mentioned buying an OPL3SAx in his diary the other day, so the support could improve soon, but for now I'd go SB16/SB64 Value all the way.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. -- Oscar Wilde
I'm not sure what it does yet. Have to get my box at home here up and running with Linux again.
l ive-0.1b.tar.gz
Check out:
http://developer.soundblaster.com/linux/
For this file:
ftp://ftp.soundblaster.com/pub/creative/beta/sb
Right now, i just want a way to play my mp3s in linux so that i can limit my windows usage to just playing Tribes.
Off-topic: It seems like whenever i play Tribes, some loser tries to use netbus on my firewall (ie they try to access port 12345). It's happened about 4 times, and always from a different dial-up modem connection, and from various different parts of the US. Anyone else notice weird shit like this?
"The value of a man resides in what he gives,
and not in what he is capable of receiving."
--Albert Einstein
Since we are on a SB topic.
I have a SB AWE 64, sound card and am trying to get it to work with the 2.2.5 kernel. It recognizes half of the devices but not the AWE. I have /dev/dsp reecognized, but when it boots up it it says AWE not found. It used to work under 2.0.36, but now I am using 2.2 and there are new sound drivers. I have configured the kernel the way it explains in the kernel sources Documentation/sound dir, enabling the options it describes to. I have a conf.modules. It loads the sb correctly (soundcode, soundlow, sound, sb). It does not load the opl3 at all but I can manually load it or load it.
The main problem is when it tries to load the awe_wave, the module gets loaded but the AWE device is not found. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated, and email can be sent to joeja@mindspring.com
Anyone have an "up-to-date" howto with the new kernel 2.2's?????????????
Only 'flamers' flame!
Well I just got my AWE64 to work. there is support for it in the 2.2 kernels. So if you are using 2.2 I'd recommend going with the AWE64 before a SB16. the AWE64 is full duplex. You'll need to set up pnp, but that is not that difficult. once you have set upi a pnpconf file, you can load the modules,, soundcore, soundlow, sound, uart401, sb, awe_wave, opl3. When loading the sb you'll need to pass a few parameters to it, you will alsohave to pass parameters to the opl3, as well...
it works pretty good ... I do not know about support for the other SB cards, I have heard that som eof the PCI cards will work ....
Only 'flamers' flame!
Geez, guys, all we want is some programming info,
not planning on making our own boards.
Sigh.
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
A nice gesture, but this is _not_ true Linux support IMO. Where's the source?
The fact that they're not trying to support SMP indicates that the driver will quite possibly be buggy on non-SMP machines too. (Under NT at least, drivers that bomb on SMP also are quite buggy in non-SMP mode too. It's just the bugs come to the surface much faster under SMP. Case in point: the SB Live drivers :)
Nope, not even close I'm afraid.
The MX300 is hard-wired silicon. The SB-Live uses the EMU-10K chip which is a DSP making it quite a lot more flexible i.e. Creative can change (improve) the functionality by changing the programming of the DSP. You'd need programming specs to support the MX-300.
Tim
The MX300 uses the Aureal Semiconductor Vortex2 chip. There is a driver under development by a third party. Check out www.opensound.com .
cameron@fuzzydice.com
Monty
-jab
Hey,
I just rooted our my OLD SB pro 8 bit,
and stuck it in on the same irq / dma / etc
as the SB Live SB16 emulation.
It works fine unders linux, and windows doesn't see it, and uses the SB16 emulation instead for all my old dos games.
Cool huh, best of both world, except for when I try and play a 16bit sound under linux )C:
Regards Redemption
I got really sick of the Linux (coming soon) line on Creative lab's developers website, so I wrote in asking about it. The reply is below. This was from last Wednesday. So, it sounds like I will be able to use my SB Live! Value soon!
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 10:31:55 -0800
From: Jacob Hawley
To: bbarrett@nd.edu
Cc: Phillip Williams
Subject: Re: Developer: Website Feedback
Yes. We will have the driver in the next two weeks. We are still working out
the versions for the SB-Live driver. Currently we are looking at 2.0.36 as
well
as 2.2.x. Both versions would included versioning and non-versioning builds of
the kernel and will not support SMP.
Jake
The oss group has been working on something for it, but they have yet to release anything also, citing that it will be late 4th quarter before they have anything done. *sigh*
How do you see these attacks under Windows (which you are apparently using for this game)?
Peace, K1
Just being able to play audio CD's while I'm at work would be great!!! I'd say, release what you have and add the bells and whistles later...
Just a little titbit. The latest OSS version has BETA support for CD Audio and MIDI ports on the SB Live! Not the most exciting thing in the world but still... Open Sound Status Page
There's a Linux section in developpement at http://developer.soundblaster.com/ for drivers and patches... I don't know if it's there for 6 months...
I hope that they'll release spec of source for the SBLive! full, if not, I think that the driver will always be buggy and I don't think that I'll buy one... I want to buy one, but only when it will be fully supported by Linux...
I tried loading a sb module with the same settings as the Windows driver reported. No luck.
As for Tribes, I hadn't noticed. I go through IP Masq, so they're not gonna get to my Win box. But try sitting on EFNet once in a while, then you'll see telnets, ftps, etc coming in.
According to a quick search on the Linux Kernel mail list, no. Creative hasn't released the specs on the card, so we're all out of luck. Sad as that may be...