[linux-audio-user] Re: Stuttering via HDSP, Cardbus, Multiface?

Tim Blechmann TimBlechmann at gmx.net
Fri Mar 26 19:08:13 EST 2004


> > ricoh ??? (derek / gentoo)
> 
> CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev a8)
i see...

> > - derek: what problems exactly did you have? i'm not exactly sure,
> > if
> >   your problem was similar to the one, ico, timothy and myself are
> >   experiencing ... 
> 
> I ran the spectrum of problems, but them main issue was that the card 
> would not make sound. Sometimes the card was not recognized, sometimes
> the card was recognized, but the firmware would not load. Other times,
> card was recognized, firmware was loaded, but I would get awful sound 
> out of it like the problems you, Timothy and Ico report. But that was 
> the last step along the way, and I could attribute it to bad IRQ 
> assignment from ACPI, if I remember correct. But that only happened 
> after a significant amount of "voodoo" with the recognition and the 
> firmware with Planet-CCRMA.
do you still have a configuration that might _break_ the hdsp? e.g.
booting with acpi enabled? i'm interested in the distortion of the sound
...
what's the output of jackd -R -d alsa (on the broken system)? does it
complain about anything?

> By "voodoo", I mean things like this: there were times, espc with Red 
> Hat, where it seemed to work only after power cycling both the laptop 
> and the multiface, but that was not a real solution. Changing distros 
> was the final voodoo, but it seemed to do the trick. You can search
> the archives of Planet-CCRMA list for "derek+HDSP" for all the gorey
> details of my saga there, as I kept them very up to date on my woes.
i'll download the archive tomorrow, when i'm at work ...


> > - ene, o2micro and ricoh are cardbus bridges, rme doesn't suggest
> > for
> >   using with an hdsp ... but they haven't had any complains about
> >   ti's cardbus bridges...
> 
> TCI 1420 and 1440 are listed as problem cards by RME. TCI 1225 shows
> up ok, though, so I imagine a 1250 is probably cool too. 
i wasn't aware of that ... i'll definitely try to setup my hdsp on my
old recording laptop, that's equipped with a 1225 ... too bad it's only
a 400 mhz machine ...

> I maintain to
> this day it is something between the cardbus controllers, their 
> kernel-drivers or modules, or the configurations thereof which creates
> this mess. I don't think the ALSA-dev folks have much power to correct
> this problem, although I would bet that their understanding of the 
> upstream problems might be more educated than ours. My guess, along
> with Ico, is that kernel-dev folks might be the best resource, if you
> can document the issue well enough. Which is hard when you aren't sure
> excatly where it lies.
the problem is, that i don't know, if the cardbus part of the kernel is
still maintained ... (at least the pcmcia subsystem is marked as
unmaintained) ... 
the yenta_socket.c code was originally written by linus himself five
years ago ... with some changes by two other guys ... and i'm happy if i
understand some of the pd internals ... but understanding / debugging a
driver is something i won't be able to learn in two nights...
me and thomas already sent emails to the kernel mailing list, but we
didn't recieve any response ... i hope, we are more lucky this time, but
i think, we'll have to solve this problem on our own...

cheers...

 Tim                          mailto:TimBlechmann at gmx.de
                              ICQ: 96771783
--
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live,
mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn,
burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across
the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and
everybody goes "Awww!"
                                                          Jack Kerouac




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