ess 1689 woes

I have an old Compaq Armada 1700 laptop. I've got everything working fine
except for sound.

The laptop has the following card:

debian:/proc/asound# cat cards
0 [ES1869 ]: ES1869 - ESS AudioDrive ES1869
ESS AudioDrive ES1869 at 0x220, irq 5, dma1 1, dma2 5

It's id'd correctly AFAICT from reading the web on this laptop. I'm also
getting the "white noise" problem - whenever anything tries to play all I
get is white noise.

If I'm using an oss-based player (eg. xmms) the player acts as though it's
playing - the bar is moving, the eq bars are hopping - but all I have is
white noise.

If I'm using an alsa-based player (eg. alsaplayer) the player doesn't play
- the time isn't moving and nothing else seems to be happening.

In both cases I get white noise from the speakers.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

--Yan

On Jul 23, 4:33 am, Captain Dondo <y...@NsOeSiPnAeMr.com> wrote:
> I have an old Compaq Armada 1700 laptop. I've got everything working fine
> except for sound.
>
> The laptop has the following card:
>
> debian:/proc/asound# cat cards
> 0 [ES1869 ]: ES1869 - ESS AudioDrive ES1869
> ESS AudioDrive ES1869 at 0x220, irq 5, dma1 1, dma2 5
>
> It's id'd correctly AFAICT from reading the web on this laptop. I'm also
> getting the "white noise" problem - whenever anything tries to play all I
> get is white noise.
>
> If I'm using an oss-based player (eg. xmms) the player acts as though it's
> playing - the bar is moving, the eq bars are hopping - but all I have is
> white noise.
>
> If I'm using an alsa-based player (eg. alsaplayer) the player doesn't play
> - the time isn't moving and nothing else seems to be happening.
>
> In both cases I get white noise from the speakers.
>
> Anyone have any suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
>
> --Yan

It seems OSS and alsa are'nt using the right drivers.
I had an old ESS 1688 audio drive PC card,
I needed to the utility 'alsaconf' to tweak its setting, if you dont
know some of the setting go to the windows control panel -> system->
devices - > ESS - >properties

If you dont have 'alsaconf' by default, you can find it somewhere on
http://www.alsa-project.org

>> If I'm using an oss-based player (eg. xmms) the player acts as though
>> it's playing - the bar is moving, the eq bars are hopping - but all I
>> have is white noise.

xmms can be configured to use OSS, ALSA, jackd, esd, arts, and any number
of sound methods. Left click the plus in the top left corner, then goto
Options -> Preferences. On the Audio I/O Plugins tab (default tab)
towards the bottom is an Output Plugin box. And a little drop down
selection thing. Select the method that applies to your system. You may
have to install xmms extras to get more than one option in that box.
# apt-get install xmms-jackd xmms-esd xmms-alsa (yada yada yada).

White noise normally happens for me when I'm running some sound daemon
with a very low sampling rate(-r 8000). Or otherwise piping /dev/random
directly to the soundcard. You might be trying to use the OSS and ALSA
drivers at the same time. I don't think there's anything that prevents
you from trying to do so. And that might be your real issue as they are
mutually exclusive in most cases.

> You might be trying to use the OSS and ALSA drivers at the same time.

After ALSA became stable ALSA drivers are now used to emulate OSS
drivers to older applications.
In effect there is only one driver , the ALSA driver

xask: Deepak Mishra wrote:
> On Jul 23, 4:33 am, Captain Dondo <y...@NsOeSiPnAeMr.com> wrote:
>
>>I have an old Compaq Armada 1700 laptop. I've got everything working fine
>>except for sound.
>>
>>The laptop has the following card:
>>
>>debian:/proc/asound# cat cards
>> 0 [ES1869 ]: ES1869 - ESS AudioDrive ES1869
>> ESS AudioDrive ES1869 at 0x220, irq 5, dma1 1, dma2 5
>>

> It seems OSS and alsa are'nt using the right drivers.
> I had an old ESS 1688 audio drive PC card,
> I needed to the utility 'alsaconf' to tweak its setting, if you dont
> know some of the setting go to the windows control panel -> system->
> devices - > ESS - >properties
>
> If you dont have 'alsaconf' by default, you can find it somewhere on
> http://www.alsa-project.org
>

OK, I've run alsaconf - but it seems that debian lenny has an outdated
alsaconf...

debian:~# alsaconf
Unloading ALSA sound driver modules: snd-es18xx snd-pcm-oss
snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm snd-page-alloc snd-opl3-lib snd-hwdep
snd-mpu401-uart snd-seq-dummy snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi
snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-timer snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device.

Building card database...
Probing legacy cards.. This may take a few minutes..
Probing: es18xx : FOUND!!

Running update-modules...

************************************************** **********************
*
* The update-modules command is deprecated and should not be used!
*
************************************************** **********************

Loading driver...
Usage: /etc/init.d/alsa
{unload|reload|force-unload|force-reload|suspend|resume}
Setting default volumes...
amixer: Mixer attach default error: No such device

================================================== =============================

Now ALSA is ready to use.
For adjustment of volumes, use your favorite mixer.

Have a lot of fun!

And, of course:

debian:/proc/asound# cat cards
--- no soundcards ---

:-(