[linux-audio-user] Alsa and RME HDSP Questions

Thomas Charbonnel thomas at undata.org
Thu May 6 04:06:29 EDT 2004


>
>
> Hy there,
> i fooled around with getting my rme hdsp card to work under my 2.6.4
> kernel in debian.
> There is some information i collected and i am confused somehow... If
> anyone has an idea to help me out I'd be glad to hear!!
>
> Current status: I am able to address my hdsp-multiface f.e. with the app
> hdspmixer, after having my box booting Win2k and doing a warm-reboot
> into debian running 2.6.4 kernel.
>

Hi,

If you cold boot into linux, you have to run hdsploader (you need for this
to have the alsa-tools and alsa-firmware packages installed).

> This i found on the net:
> If you have a recent hdsp-card or if you are using a recent (December,
> 2002) driver in windows or macOS, you might have the wrong firmware
> installed. In order to make alsa-hdsp recognize the hdsp you have to
> downgrade the firmware of your card(bus) to revision 10 (0xa hex).
> (by klingt.org)
> Q: Is this still so? I'm using my Multiface with different computers,
> running Win2k, Mac OSX and Debian, so I'd like to be able to use the
> latest drivers (which also implies using the latest firmware i guess)

This is no longer true.

>
> Q: Where to get the firmware??

The term firmware is ambiguous, it covers two things :
- A flashable firmware that is found on the hdsp pci or pcmcia cards (this
is the rev entry of lspci for the card). For now no firmware flashing tool
exists for linux. I'm planning to write one, but it is low priority since
the linux driver works with any of those firmware revisions.
- the configuration data that has to be uploaded to the I/O box (Multiface
and Digiface) using hdsploader. In this case the firmware can be found in
the alsa-firmware package.

>
> Q: Has the firmware get loaded via hdsploader after loading the modules,
> and how do you do it? a script?
>

You could do it by hand, or with a script, or using the post-install
option of the alsa startup script.

> Anyway, i get:
>
> bigh:~/alsa-tools-1.0.4/hdsploader# ./hdsploader
> hdsploader - firmware loader for RME Hammerfall DSP cards
> Looking for HDSP + Multiface or Digiface cards :
> Card 0 : RME Hammerfall DSP + Multiface at 0xdfdf0000, irq 18
> Upload firmware for card hw:0
> Unable to open file
> '/usr/local/share/alsa/firmware/hdsploader/multiface_firmware_rev11.bin'
> for reading
>
> There is no alsa directory in: /usr/local/share/
>

You don't have the alsa-firmware package installed : apt-get install
alsa-firmware

> I just compiled a 2.6.4 kernel and I don't feel i have to
> apt-get-install alsa since i'm glad to have alsa in my kernel finally...
> :-)
> (btw: if i'd install alsa via apt-get, would that overwrite crucial
> settings/files created by my 2.6.x kernel?)
>
> Thanks if anyone has time to help me out!!!
>
> Peter~
>

Let me know if you still have problems,
Thomas






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