Sound/Audio Installation/Configuration

• I recompiled the kernel images, native kernel modules, and external kernel modules for PCMCIA and ALSA sound drivers.
• Yet I could not get the ALSA module snd-card-es18xx.o to work with my ES1879 sound card.
• But just like OSS/Free SoundBraster module in Linux 2.0.xx and Linux 2.2.xx, the module snd-card-es1688 for ESx688 cards works fine with ES1879, too.
• This time, I followed the standard way recommended by the SuSE and ALSA teams: Compile the kernel with sound support built as a module (soundcore.o).
• When compiling ALSA drivers, the configure program automatically configured the source with the options --with-isapnp=yes and --with-sequencer=yes, which are necessary for my card.
• For PCMCIA, I used the option ./Configure --noprompt --cardbus --current.

• Now I don't use OSS/Free sound drivers supported by default in the current standard kernels.
• Instead, I installed ALSA (Advance Linux Sound Architecture). Installed is version 0.5.5 from SuSE Linux 6.4.
• There are some problems, Damn! ISA PnP cards!: Window 95/98 and Peonix BIOS Setup indicates that my sound card might be ESS AudioDrive ES1879. Previous Linux kernels, on the other hand, detected it as ESS AudioDrive ES1688. The current ALSA driver (snd-card-es18xx) for ES1879 doesn't work either while snd-card-es1688 for ES1688/ES688 works rather good (at least, so far).
• Another confusing thing is SuSE Team's comment (doc/packages/alsa/README.SuSE): They explicitly say that the sound support in kernel should be built as a module (soundcore.o), but not be compiled in. First of all, this conflicts the guide from ALSA Team and ALSA-Sound-mini-HOWTO. Furthermore, the depmod does not build the module dependencies correctly; soundcore.o wouldn't be loaded if not explicitly loaded before loading ALSA modules.
• Since I'm sick of changing RC scripts, I COMPILED the sound support into the kernel image.
• So, the part relevant to ESS AudioDrive ES1688 sound card in the /etc/modules.conf looks like this:
  /etc/modules.conf

  # YaST2: 
  # ALSA section {$#@begin@#$} [don't remove or move this line] vvvvv
  #
  # ALSA native device support, generated by YaST2
  #
  alias char-major-116 snd
  options snd snd_major=116 snd_cards_limit=1
  alias snd-card-0 snd-card-es1688
  options snd-card-es1688 snd_index=0 snd_id=card1  
  #
  # OSS/Free emulation
  #
  alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
  alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
  alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
  alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
  alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
  alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
  #
  # ALSA section {$#@_end_@#$} [don't remove or move this line] ^^^^^
  

• To avoid adjusting the mixer everytime I load the ALSA modules, I need to prepare /etc/asound.conf, too. Originally prepared by YaST2 from SuSE Linux 6.4, it looks like this:
  /etc/asound.conf

  # ALSA driver configuration
  # This configuration is generated with the alsactl program.
  
  soundcard("card1") {
    mixer("ESS AudioDrive ES1688") {
      ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
      element("PC Speaker Volume",0,200,Volume1(0))
      ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
      ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
      element("Aux Volume",0,200,Volume1(0,0))
      ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
      ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
      element("MIC Volume",0,200,Volume1(0,0))
      ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
      ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
      element("FM Volume",0,200,Volume1(0,0))
      ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
      ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
      element("CD Volume",0,200,Volume1(15,15))
      ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
      ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
      element("Line Volume",0,200,Volume1(0,0))
      ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
      ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
      element("PCM Volume",0,200,Volume1(15,15))
      ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
      ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
      element("Master Volume",0,200,Volume1(15,15))
      ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
      ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
      element("Input Gain Volume",0,200,Volume1(0,0))
      element("Input MUX",0,401,Mux2(element("",0,0)))
    }
  }
  

• I haven't changed rcalsasound (/etc/rc.d/alsasound) script for obvious reasons.
• Read also the files Documentation/ESS and Documentation/sound/ESS1868 under the Linux kernel source tree.