Re: [linux-audio-user] Mandrake 9.0 Roland UA-100

Hi Matthijs, Thanks for the reply. Do you mind if I talk through my perception of what is going on there, and possibly people could point out any deficiencies? The Kernel is a humongous blob of code :-) that just does anything asked, based upon a set of questions it understands. Any questions it doesn't understand are tersly rejected. Chunks of software are loaded into the kernel that allow a lump of hardware to be come available to programmes that run by calling an operating system function to do something. Do wire a 'new' hardware device into the kernel, the kernel is recompiled. This process can be completed without reloading the whole kernel from scratch. Is modprobe the process that set the re-compile in motion ? and is modules.conf the file thayt defines which software modules are recompiled into the kernal at start up? . How do I see what modules/drivers the kernel has loaded? Audio & midi support in the kernel are presumably software concepts that applications understand, that allow audio like functions to be performed in a standard way, and have some sort of link with the hardware driver? How is this process implemented and how do I get a status that can indicate it's been successful? USB is another layer of abstraction on top of this stack that simply allows the audio and midi drivers to talk to a USB device that identifies itself of being capable of supporting adio or MIDI like processes? Will the Audio MIDI components support this process directly even though most discussion concerns Sound Cards? Again how do I monitor which USB components are present and responding? and what happens if/when the USB connection is terminated, ie what do I expect to happen when the UA-100 is turned of or on? should the device appear and dissappear seemlessly or will I have to issue a command to rebind it into the kernel? Sorry for all these questions but they are concepts that as you probably already know are purposefully kept from PC users who just press on an icon and still feel that if ./configure,make, make install is what you type why doesn't configure run make & make install as well :-)