/dev/cdrom question

[Jonathan Berry]

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 20:35:38 +0000, C Toews <toewsc at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Jonathan,
> 
> Thanks very much for the help.  Your description of the device files was
> very helpful.  I followed the directions on the links you gave me and
> succeeded in generating a symbolic link between /dev/cdrom and /dev/hdc.
> When I crank up the cd player (I'm using gnome-cd), it now at least looks
> like its playing the disc (i.e. it shows the tracks, and when I push play,
> the seconds tick by, etc.)

Cool, that is progress.

> Still no sound, unfortunately.  I've tried messing with the volume settings,
> all to no avail.  I know its not a matter of a missing cable, since audio
> plays fine on the Windows side (I'm running this on a laptop, by the way,
> for whatever its worth.)  I'm a little confused about which volume settings

Well, there are two ways of playing audio CDs.  On a desktop system,
there is the cable that goes from the CD drive to the soundcard and
then there is the IDE cable.  I do not know if there is an equivalent
cable to the former in a laptop, but either way, you certainly cannot
add it then : ).  Playing through one is analog (the soundcard cable)
and through the other is digital (the IDE cable).

> to adjust:  there seem to be three volume settings of relevance,  one being
> the volume bar on the player itself, one being the volume icon in the tray
> (I'm running gnome) and the third being the large sound panel with lots of
> different option I can access from the sound and video menu.  I've tried

Right click on the volume icon in the tray and click Open Volume
Control.  This will bring up the gnome-volume-control program that 
can contol all of the volumes in the system.  The other simply modify
one of the different levels available there.  The CD sliders should
control the analog CD audio output.

> unmuting everything via the latter and putting all other volume settings on
> all other volume bars up to max.  Of course, with so many volume bars, it is
> hard to know if there might not be some particular combination of ups,
> downs, mutings, etc. that leads to sounds, but this seems to me improbable.
> I do get sound when I do the sound check, so the system knows about the
> sound card.  The difficulty seems to be connecting the sound card to the
> player.  I've tried other players (in particular, Grip) with the same silent
> results.... ;-(

Can you play sound files on the hard disk?  Like MP3s?  You'll need to
grab an MP3 plugin from Livna or Dag or some other repo since RedHat
cannot ship them with Fedora because of legal issues.

> Argh.  I'll keep plugging away and see what happens.  Thanks again for your
> help--if you have any more ideas, I'd be very pleased to hear them.
> 
> Best,
> Carl

Try using xmms to play the CD.  If you do not have it run "yum install
xmms" as root.  It will show up as Menu->Sound & Video->Audio Player
in the gnome menu.  Right click on the player and select
Options->Preferences.  In input plugins, select the CD Audio Player
and click the Configure button.  Under Drive 1 tab you should put
Device: /dev/cdrom (assuming you have the symlink) and under
Directory: you should put the mount point.  Run "ls /media/" and "cat
/etc/fstab" to figure out what to put (it is /media/cdrecorder in my
system).  Click Check drive... button and if you get OK on both, the
it is setup correctly.  Click Ok to dismiss the dialog.  Make sure
your Output pligin is set to where you can play and hear sound files. 
There are wav files in /usr/share/sounds/ if you need some to try. 
Click Ok to close the Prefs dialog.  Right click on xmms again and
select Play Directory.  Navigate to the mount point you found before
(/media/something) and click Ok.  If you cannot hear sound (make sure
both PCM and CD in your volume control are unmuted and turned up), go
back to the CD Audio Player Configuration dialog and change the Play
mode: from Analog to Digital audio extraction.  I would think the
digital should work.  Let us know how it goes.

Jonathan