1 Installing and using Creative AWE midi sound under Linux.
2
3 This documentation is devoted to the Creative Sound Blaster AWE32, AWE64 and
4 SB32.
5
6 1) Make sure you have an ORIGINAL Creative SB32, AWE32 or AWE64 card. This is
7 important, because the driver works only with real Creative cards.
8
9 2) If your card is NOT "Plug-n-Play" then go to 5th step now. In the other case
10 proceed to step 3.
11
12 3) You should compile in kernel ISAPnP support or you should obtain isapnptools.
13 If you choose kernel level ISAPnP skip to step 5. I looked through other PnP
14 packages for Linux, but all they are either in deep unstable beta/alpha releases
15 or they are much worse than isapnptools. In my case isapnptools were included in
16 a Linux distribution (Red Hat 5.x). If you also already have them then go to
17 step 4.
18
19 The latest copy of isapnptools-1.17 is available from
20 ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/hardware/isapnptools-1.17.tgz
21 You should gunzip/untar it to something like /usr/local/
22 (cp isapnptools-1.17.tgz /usr/local/; cd /usr/local/;
23 tar -xzf isapnptools-1.17.tgz).
24
25 Compile the package (make) and install it (make install).
26 If something goes wrong check the INSTALL file in isapnptools-1.15 directory.
27
28 4) Now do a "pnpdump > /etc/isapnp.conf". File /etc/isapnp.conf will contain
29 info about PnP devices you may have. If you want you can read the manual page
30 about isapnp.conf file (man isapnp.conf). Most lines of your isapnp.conf file are
31 commented. You should uncomment lines which don't conflict with your
32 configuration.
33
34 ATTENTION! Device Audio should have 1 IRQ, 2 DMA and 3 base I/O resources.
35 If you don't have such a configuration you should manually add the resources to
36 the isapnp.conf file. After editing I got these lines in the Audio device
37 section (I ripped out all the comments):
38
39 "(CONFIGURE CTL0044/1132685 (LD 0 (INT 0 (IRQ 5 (MODE +E))) (DMA 0 (CHANNEL 1))
40 (DMA 1 (CHANNEL 5)) (IO 0 (BASE 0x220)) (IO 1 (BASE 0x330)) (IO 2 (BASE 0x388))
41 (ACT Y)))"
42
43 (In your case CTL044/1132685 numbers may be other)
44
45 Don't forget to uncomment (ACT Y)!
46
47 The next device is the on-board IDE controller. You may enable it if you wish,
48 but it will not effect sound.
49
50 Then WaveTable goes. For some reason Plug-n-Play detects only one I/O port,
51 but the wavetable needs THREE! My working string is:
52
53 "(CONFIGURE CTL044/1132685 (LD 2 (IO 0 (BASE 0x0620)) (IO 1 (BASE 0x0A20))
54 (IO 2 (BASE 0x0E20)) (ACT Y) ))"
55
56 Resources 0x0620, 0x0A20 and 0x0E20 should work. Other on-board devices:
57 Gameport and StereoEnhance are not required to be initialized.
58
59 Now you can execute "isapnp /etc/isapnp.conf". No errors should be reported.
60 If you correctly installed isapnptools, then isapnp will run every boot time.
61
62 5) Now you should recompile the kernel.
63
64 In "make (x,menu)config" select in "Sound":
65 "Sound card support", "100% Sound Blaster compatibles (SB16/32/64, ESS, Jazz16) support",
66 "Generic OPL2/OPL3 FM synthesizer support" and "FM synthesizer (YM3812/OPL-3)
67 support" as <M> (module).
68
69 In "make (x,menu)config" select in "Sound":
70 select "OSS sound modules" as <M> (module)
71 select "AWE32 Synth" as <M> (module)
72
73 Now recompile the kernel (make dep; make (b)zImage, b(z)lilo, etc...;
74 make modules; make modules_install), update your boot loader (if required) and
75 boot new kernel.
76
77 6) If awesfx program is not included in your distribution, then download it
78 from http://bahamut.mm.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~iwai/awedrv/index.html#Latest.
79 Compile it. Copy sfxload program to /usr/bin. To enable AWE general midi
80 synthesis you should also get the sound bank file for general midi from
81 http://members.xoom.com/yar/synthgm.sbk.gz. Copy it to /usr and gunzip it there.
82
83 7) Edit /etc/modules.conf, inserting at the end of the file:
84
85 alias midi awe_wave
86 post-install awe_wave /usr/bin/sfxload /usr/synthfm.sbk
87
88 That will enable the Sound Blaster and AWE wave synthesis.
89
90 To play midi files you should get one of these programs:
91
92 Playmidi 2.4 or higher: http://playmidi.openprojects.net
93 Drvmidi: http://bahamut.mm.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~iwai/awedrv/index.html#Latest
94
95 (These are available at all major Linux FTP sites and may already be
96 in your distribution)
97 Remember to use -a switch if you have playmidi as a compiled binary (ex. RPM)
98
99 If something goes wrong please e-mail me. All comments and suggestions are
100 welcome.
101
102 Yaroslav Rosomakho (alons55@dialup.ptt.ru)
103 http://www.yar.opennet.ru
104
105 Last Updated: 10Apr2000
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