Fedora Core 2 ISA Soundcard Configuration Howto - Sound Blaster AWE

Sat Nov 6 17:33:06 UTC 2004

The kids wanted me to put Fedora on the old piece of junk I have.  The 
computer still works wonderfully but it is old.  The motherboard is a 
Tyan S1830 Tsunami AT with the last BIOS update Tyan had available for 
the board.  That was so I could run a slot adapter in the slot one 
board.  The CPU is an Intel PIII 850 MHZ processor.  There is 320MB of 
various PC100 memory sticks in the board.  Hey Anaconda finally knows 
about the Gateway 2000 Vivitron 15 monitor attached.  Yes Virgina you 
can install Fedora without mouse support and just using the Anaconda 
Accelerator keys.  The  serial mouse works great after the install.  So 
after the install completed I followed the steps below.  I hope this 
helps someone else.  And yes if you are asking, I am too cheap too buy a 
PCI sound card when the AWE 16 or 32 card still works fine!  Finally, 
Fedora Core 2 works great on the computer.  The computer in general is a 
little poky because of the bus speed but has not been a problem.  I'll 
soon know if these steps works in Fedora Core 3.

Greg Morgan

  1.) I did not have to make BIOS changes because the computer was
      working properly before the Fedora Core series.  I may have had
      Red Hat 7.3 or 8.0 on it before.  Be aware that this could be a
      trouble shooting area.

  2.) Make sure the cables are in the right place.
      a.) Speakers are plugged into sound out or line out.
      b.) Hook up internal cable from cd-rom to sound card.
          Yeah Yeah.  I raided the CD-R/W drive and forgot to hook the
          new CD-R drive to the sound card internally.  I could have
          been done sooner. ;-)

  3.) Red Hat does not support ISA Sound cards any longer.
      http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=122838
      Perform manual steps for Sound Blaster AWE-32/AWE-64 or other ISA
      sound cards.  You will have to replace snd-sbawe with the driver
      for your card in the /etc/modprobe.conf file.  These are the lines
      that the fedora hat>System Tools>Soundcard Detection application
      would put in your /etc/modprobe.conf file, if it supported ISA
      cards.

  4.) Edit /etc/modprobe.conf and add these lines as root.  Note, the
      lines may rap in email.  Each line should be entered on one line.

      alias snd-card-0 snd-sbawe
      install snd-sbawe /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-sbawe && 
/usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
      remove snd-sbawe { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; 
}; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-sbawe

      I used the above modprobe.conf settings.  You may need to pass in
      options to the soundcard, if you have any problems.  The
      modprobe.conf may look like the following. However, I have
      not tested this.

      alias snd-card-0 snd-sbawe
      options sound dmabuf=1
      options snd-sbawe io=0x220 irq=5 dma=0 dma16=3 mpu_io=0x330
      install snd-sbawe /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-sbawe && 
/usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
      remove snd-sbawe { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; 
}; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-sbawe

  5.) Modprobe the sound module at the command prompt as root.  Again
      change the soundcard driver if you are not using sbawe.
      /sbin/modprobe snd-sbawe

  6.) Set the sound levels via normal a user with
      fedora hat>Sound & Video>Volume Control.
      Make sure to set master, CD, line in, PCM, etc.  There are two
      tabs to make these changes to.

  7.) Set the sound server preferences with
      fedora hat>Preferences>Sound.
      While on the General tab check Enable sound server startup.
      If you desire, check Sound for events.
      Finally, adjust your other preferences on the remaining two tabs.
      Don't forget to set the volume on the speakers if it there is a
      control on it.

  8.) Test a wave file with
      fedora hat>System Tools>Terminal.
      Then enter this command in the window
      aplay /usr/share/sounds/generic.wav
      Close the terminal window.
      Note that the PCM slider c

  9.) Play a CD with
      fedora hat>Sound & Video>CD Player.

10.) Now because of my cable issues I rebooted along the way.
      You may have to set the sound levels as you did in step five.
      The reboot may be helpful after the modprobe.conf settings are
      in place.  However, I think this covers all the things I did.

References:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-June/msg03935.html
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=122838
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=124003
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-August/msg03832.html
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ntopic22347.html
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&forumid=33&threadid=166983
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=185411
http://hnr.dyndns.org/howto/Soundblaster-AWE.pdf
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ntopic22347.html