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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? "

42 comments

  1. Soundblaster AWE 64 and Kernel 2.2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Load in the following order:

    soundcore, soundlow, sound, uart401, sb

  2. The drivers from Creative should be available soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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.

  3. Sblive w/ workable drivers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dunno if this is important, but a recent article by www.3dai.com mentions Quake 2 being played under Linux on an SBLive...

    1. Re:Sblive w/ workable drivers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hi, I'm the webmaster of www.3DAI.com. In a recent visit to E-MU/Creative Labs, I was playing Quake2 on a Live! card with Linux. It was like a RedHat 5.1 build I believe, but not certain. It sounded damn good! I also talked to one of the Technology Evangelist and he said that Creative was looking at Linux for a gamer platform. And with the recent release of the Banshee drivers for the Creative cards (does it work on the Diamond?) I think this is a good sign!
      Steve

  4. buy a mini switch box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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.

  5. Creative Labs PCI cards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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...

    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 /dev/dsp channel.

    You may see better support for these cards through 4Front but they haven't completed anything yet either.

  6. SBLive driver availability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    At this time Creative is not in a position to release the materials that it has received under NDA from our chipset suppliers or the DVD consortium.

    Huh? What does this have to do with SBLive? The only "chipset supplier" for SBLive is E-mu, a company which Creative owns...

  7. Old sb vs. New by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I always wonder about these new sound cards..
    exactly how much better are these new cards compared the original sb16 or awe32?

  8. Leaked specs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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?

  9. MX300 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > 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.

  10. sb16 compatibility? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't want to sound like a real newbie, but
    how do you see the telnet, ftp, etc attempts to your machine? By looking through /var/log/secure?

  11. Opensound BETA support released by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, but it says MONTHS from alpha!
    In the meantime, maybe the developer.s will finish the
    binary only driver.

  12. AWE 64 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    SB AWE 64 Value: if you can find it, it's the best.
    Otherwise, I would go for a Yamaha..

  13. sb16 compatibility? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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.

  14. The drivers from Creative should be available soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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...

  15. Creative Labs PCI cards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Excuse that... 4front doesn't go to the right page... it's actually www.opensound.com

  16. Current status on 4front by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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?

  17. Good timing by gavinhall · · Score: 1

    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!

  18. MX300 by volkris · · Score: 1

    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

  19. MX300 by volkris · · Score: 1
    Oh yeah, see I heard about these guys developing the SB Live and MX300 cards at the same time and must have misunderstood it. Oh well.

    So anyone know of a group working on drivers that will be free? (for us poor college students...)


    ~Chris Carlin

  20. MX300 by volkris · · Score: 1

    Really?

    I keep hearing about how Diamond can release drastic updates to the hardware adding completely new features through the programmable chipset/chip....

  21. AWE 64 by BigEd · · Score: 1
    DON'T go for a Yamaha. The support (at least for mine) is flaky at best.

    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
  22. There is a driver on the Creative Developer page?! by Hardware · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure what it does yet. Have to get my box at home here up and running with Linux again.

    Check out:
    http://developer.soundblaster.com/linux/

    For this file:
    ftp://ftp.soundblaster.com/pub/creative/beta/sbl ive-0.1b.tar.gz

  23. sb16 compatibility? by Doviende · · Score: 1
    ok...what about the thing in windoze where it says "sb16 compatibility"? Is that just an interface for old dos games, or is it actually a hardware feature?

    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
  24. Soundblaster AWE 64 and Kernel 2.2 by josepha48 · · Score: 1

    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!

  25. AWE 64 and 2.2 by josepha48 · · Score: 1

    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!

  26. Don't need the chip masks, fer .... by dr_strangelove · · Score: 1

    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!"
  27. uh, sure... by Chad+Page · · Score: 1

    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 :)

  28. MX300 by tjrw · · Score: 1

    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

  29. MX300 by Camarones · · Score: 1

    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

  30. My particular kludge by chamont · · Score: 1
    I bought an SB Live!, but I still had my old SB AWE64 isa card laying around. For a while I just toughed it out, figuring that eventually a linux driver would appear. Checking opensound.org, it looked like it was going to be a LONG wait. So I threw my AWE64 back in and use it for Linux & Live! for Win98 Quake 2 sessions (yes, I do run Q2 in Linux sometimes but it sucks compared to how fast it is in 98). The only hard part is switching my speakers from one card to another during OS switch time.

    Monty

  31. Current status on SB Live! support by Nethescurial · · Score: 1
    According to 4Front's status page:
    SB Live!: Driver development started but still months away from beta due to no documentation. We are investigating some other mechanisms of developing the driver by means of reverse engineering and/or using PCI bus logic analyzers. Managed to get the AC97 mixers and the MIDI port working. So you can only hear AudioCDs and use the MPU401 MIDI port. No beta release dates available yet.
    The sound support in the kernel always lags behind that of OSS, so i'd watch this page for further developments.

    -jab

  32. SBLive driver availability by Erik+Nygren · · Score: 1
    I received the following response from Creative Labs:
    From: Developer Support ( devsup@creativelabs.com)

    At this time Creative is not in a position to release the materials that it has received under NDA from our chipset suppliers or the DVD consortium.

    Creative is actively working on Linux drivers for our audio and graphics products, and will do what we can within our legal rights to provide drivers to the Linux community.

    This is an unfortunate position that quite a few hardware vendors seem to be getting stuck in. Hopefully companies will start to see the value in releasing specifications without NDAs, as the availability of high-quality drivers and other software supporting their hardware can only improve their product sales.
  33. SB 16 by redemption · · Score: 1

    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
  34. The drivers from Creative should be available soon by bbarrett · · Score: 1

    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

  35. Linux-kernel by DarkeChilde · · Score: 1

    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*

  36. sb16 compatibility? by KaLeVR1 · · Score: 1

    How do you see these attacks under Windows (which you are apparently using for this game)?

    --
    Peace, K1
  37. Current status on SB Live! support by redlemon · · Score: 1

    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...

  38. Opensound BETA support released by JJC · · Score: 1

    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

  39. Linux section at http://developer.soundblaster.com by {X-Frog} · · Score: 1

    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...

  40. sb16 compatibility? by whoop · · Score: 2

    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.

  41. Linux-kernel by whoop · · Score: 2

    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...