[linux-audio-user] Digigram VX Pocket firmware help please

tim hall tech at glastonburymusic.org.uk
Thu Apr 20 09:30:07 EDT 2006


On Thursday 20 April 2006 13:03, Hamish Low was like:
> Hi,
> I recently bought a VX Pocket V2.  Great soundcard (on windows) and
> finally one with linux drivers for my laptop (which will be great when
> it works)
> I've been trying various interpretations of the instructions on the ALSA
> page.
> http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/template.php?company=Digigram&
>card=VXpocket+440.&chip=Motorola+DSP&module=vxpocket
> <http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/template.php?company=Digigram
>&card=VXpocket+440.&chip=Motorola+DSP&module=vxpocket> but still no luck. 
> I'm relatively new to linux and it's been a
> crash-course getting this far.  But I'm stuck and need some help.  I
> think maybe the instructions make assumptions about linux knowledge that
> I don't have - like how do I turn on module support?

I do not understand this either. You usually need to compile and install 
modules. IANAX - fairly sure that module support is enabled by default.

> I'm using Demudi - a 2.6 kernel - I've installed the firmware through
> synaptic

OK, little warning about Linux mindsets. This is the 2.6.12-multimedia kernel? 
Most developers consider this to be out of date, but then most developers 
consider anything stable to be no longer worth supporting. You may get told 
to go compile a more recent kernel because it solves many other problems that 
they find boring, frustrating and a distraction from the work that they need 
to be getting on with. This does not necessarily mean that what you want to 
do is impossible.

Hopefully there will be a more up-to-date DeMuDi kernel soon, but there is no 
timeline for this. If you do decide you need to rebuild your kernel, 
instructions are here: 
http://demudi.agnula.org/wiki/Low-latencyKernelBuildingHowto
Doing it the Debian way is about as painless as kernel building gets, but you 
are still going to have to get savvy about the configuration.

> but also downloaded the latest stable alsa tools, utils, lib, drivers
> and firmware packages as per the instructions.  Also had to download gcc
> and make and some other things
> but it seems like the instructions are incomplete
> make install says something about no path specified
> ./configure doesn't work
> make build says the same thing
> not sure what to do next.

Put Debian sources in your /etc/apt/source.list and
apt-get install build essential

> It said something about a newer kernel
> but this shouldn't be necessary
> as the linux drivers were working a few years ago.
> and I don't want to do an apt-get dist-upgrade
> because when I tried that nothing worked at all.

Yep, do not dist-upgrade right now. The body of the ALSA Digigram VXpocket 440 
page seems rather out of date and includes a lot of instructions that you 
should not need to deal with under DeMuDi. In fact they could be 
counter-productive. All you should have to do is compile / install / 
configure the modules.
-- 
cheers,

tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk/tim



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