Does anyone have a working ISA sound card in F9?

[robatino]

In F8 and earlier, it was possible to get an ISA sound card working by simply adding a line

modprobe snd-card-0

to /etc/rc.local - see

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=178998

However, this no longer works for me in F9, even using the explicit module ("modprobe snd-cs4236" in my case) and even though the modules do in fact load at boot time. There is an error message associated with the volume control saying that either the appropriate Gstreamer plugins weren't found, or the sound card was not detected. Does anyone at all have an ISA sound card working in F9, and if so, how?

[JEO]

You know, I saw that error on a soundblaster 16. I believe the solution is to modify the permissions given to /dev/snd/* and /dev/dsp*. If those devices show up as being owned by root then you need to change the permissions. In the file /etc/security/console.perms.d/50-default.perms, add a line near the begining:
<sound>=/dev/dsp* /dev/snd/*

and one near the end:
<console> 0666 <sound> 0600 root

[robatino]

I was reluctant to try this since I don't understand exactly what it does, and the 0666 permissions worry me, but I tried it. The volume control applet is no longer x-ed out, so I can use it to set volume, but there is still no actual sound coming from the speakers. I've reported this at

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=452052

[JEO]

Have you verified that the pulseaudio sound server process is running? There is a sound test page in gnome under system, preferences, hardware, sound - using that, have you tried testing all of the various dropdown menu sound system choices? Have you verified that the volume sliders are all up and unmuted in gnome-volume-control?

[robatino]

It's a pain to boot the machine up, since it's so slow, and I have to switch several cables, but I'll check this out next time. What I remember is that there was some pulseaudio process running, but that under Applications/Sound & Video/PulseAudio Volume Control, there were no Input or Output devices listed. I did check that all the volume sliders were up and unmuted in gnome-volume-control.

[JEO]

I never looked at pulse audio volume control screens on my old pnpisa sb16 system I'll have a look at it also.

[JEO]

Ok I looked at pavucontrol and you are correct, the Output Devices and Input Devices are empty for the isppnp sound card. So even with the pulseaudio sound server process running there is no sound through pulseaudio. However, if I select Alsa or OSS in the dropdown boxes through system, preferences, hardware, sound - then I get sound. Only the Pulseaudio setting fails to produce sound. One thing is I had to create an .asoundrc file for the card in my home directory or Alsa sound would also fail (only OSS worked initially).

[robatino]

In System/Preferences/Hardware/Sound, under "Sound Events", "Music and Movies", and "Audio Conferencing", if I choose "OSS - Open Sound System", I can successfully play the test sound. (I didn't try ALSA as I didn't want to attempt creating a correct .asoundrc file.) Under "Default Mixer Tracks", there is only one choice "CS4235 (Alsa Mixer)". I am still unable to get sound to play anywhere else, even under the "Sounds" tab in the same window. The command "play /usr/lib/thunderbird-2.0.0.14/res/samples/test.wav" gives

*** PULSEAUDIO: Unable to create stream.
play soxio: Can't open output file `default': cannot set parameters

so it still seems to be trying to use PulseAudio.

[JEO]

Here is my .asoundrc in case you decide to try it. I had to drop the first period and add .txt suffix to get it to upload.

[JEO]

"so it still seems to be trying to use PulseAudio."

The reason for that is the existence of the /etc/alsa/pulse-default.conf file. It is referenced near the beginning of the /etc/alsa/alsa.conf file.

[robatino]

Do you know if anyone has actually gotten PulseAudio to work with ISA sound cards, as opposed to disabling it? I haven't been able to find out, but if there is a bug preventing it from working with ISA, fixing that would be the best (and in the long run the simplest) solution.

[JEO]

Somewhere I saw a huge post that covered all of the steps in setting up pulseaudio to work with an isa sound card. If I come across it again I'll post a link to it. I didn't think it was worth all the time it would take to manually configure it.