[linux-audio-user] Tascam US-122, Laptop and Keyboard

[Steve Fosdick]

Hi All,

Frustrated that my laptop doesn't have line-in and that the mic-in is not
very useful (unbalanced, no phantom power) I have finally invested in an
external USB interface, the Tascam US-122.

Unfortunately this doesn't appear to work with my laptop though it works
mostly-ok with my desktop.

The two applications I have tried to use are jack+ardour and the standard
ALSA aplay.  ALSA aplay does work for a while but can stall part way through
playing and then never seems to recover eventually reporting I/O error.

Jackd will sometimes run for a few seconds without error but soon starts
reporting errors of the form:

delay of 24606.000 usecs exceeds estimated spare time of 23134.000; restart ...
delay of 24779.000 usecs exceeds estimated spare time of 23134.000; restart ...
delay of 24781.000 usecs exceeds estimated spare time of 23134.000; restart ...
delay of 24741.000 usecs exceeds estimated spare time of 23134.000; restart ...
jackd watchdog: timeout - killing jackd

Meanwhile, on the console/syslog the following message appears:

Mar 22 19:49:31 alfroid kernel: ep=10 stalled with status=-63

I have read the thread on this list "USX2Y rawusb mode" and have therefore
already tried turning off ACPI and running with nrpacks=4.  Turning off ACPI
seemed to make little difference though it did change the interrupt
assignments, while nrpacks=4 seems to have improved things slighly though
not reliable enough to use.  Changing the -p option seems to change the values
of time reported above but that's about all.  The problem is just the same for
either 44100 or 48000 sample rate.

I have tried kernels 2.6.10, 2.6.11, 2.6.11.4 and 2.6.11.5.  The 2.6.11
series seems to be closer to working.  Anyone please have ideas of what to
try next or what info I could gather than would be useful?

By comparison it works a treat on my desktop PC apart from one from little
niggle (which also affects the laptop).  Sometimes when unplugging the
US-122 the keyboard on the PC locks up.  At this point it is usually still
possible to log in over the network and shut the PC down which is
sometimes sucessful and sometimes it hangs somewhere in the shutdown sequence.

>From my laptop, /proc/interrupts with ACPI on:
           CPU0
  0:   26742183          XT-PIC  timer
  1:       7401          XT-PIC  i8042
  2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
  5:    1148549          XT-PIC  VIA686A, ohci1394, VIA82XX-MODEM
  8:          1          XT-PIC  rtc
  9:          4          XT-PIC  acpi
 10:    1218664          XT-PIC  eth0, uhci_hcd, uhci_hcd
 12:      77339          XT-PIC  i8042
 14:      71223          XT-PIC  ide0
 15:         13          XT-PIC  ide1
NMI:          0
LOC:          0
ERR:          0
MIS:          0

/proc/interrupts with acpi=off:
           CPU0
  0:      97345          XT-PIC  timer
  1:        129          XT-PIC  i8042
  2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
  5:     100000          XT-PIC  VIA686A, VIA82XX-MODEM
  8:          1          XT-PIC  rtc
 10:      16371          XT-PIC  uhci_hcd, uhci_hcd, eth0
 11:          0          XT-PIC  ohci1394
 12:        113          XT-PIC  i8042
 14:       5280          XT-PIC  ide0
 15:         13          XT-PIC  ide1
NMI:          0
LOC:          0
ERR:          0
MIS:          0

TiA,
Steve.