The following document is provided AS-IS without any warranty of any kind. Permission is granted to distribute this document in any form as long as this notice remains intact. Permission is also granted, and encouraged, to make derivative works from this document as long as this notice remains intact. 12/29/1998 Aaron Kuhn (akuhn@usa.net) ------------------------------------------------------- Linux, Windows 95, and your Yamaha OPL3-SA2 based card You may have seen my previous posting here about my Yamaha-OPL3SA2 soundcard. Well, after having to reconfigure my system again, I realize what I wrote was total incoherent babble. I've also figured out a thing or two since then. So I now present a more structured guide to how I got my soundcard working. The important things bout my system you need to know: Tekram P5T30-B4 motherboard with Award 4.51G BIOS Yamaha-OPL3SA2 based soundcard (only mention of a company I can begin to locate is "Juster Multimedia" on the box) Red Hat Linux 5.1 with 2.0.36 kernel Windows 95 OSR2 If your system configurations anything like mine, hopefully this will help. My problem with my soundcard was that it'd work in Windows 95, but not in Linux. The first thing you should know about these soundcards in Linux is they're not going to work as Soundblaster/Soundblaster Pro clones. The cards use the OPL3-SA2 chip which is basically a smorgasbord of audio technology slapped onto one chip. Not a smart way to make a card, but it's cheap. To sucessfully get it working in Linux, the card will have to be setup as a Windows/Microsoft Sound System Device <- (shudder). Anyhow, here's the basic steps to making this happen In my BIOS under the PNP device configuration, I have set: PnP OS Installed: No Resources controlled by: Manual I'm using the Linux 2.0.36 kernel with the OSSFree 3.8s9 drivers. The most important settings on my soundcard are: 220 (SoundBlaster Pro function of the chip, doesn't do a damn thing in Linux) 530 (Windows Sound System - ding ding! This is what we want) 388 (MPU-401 also wanted) Primary DMA 0 Secondary DMA 1 Now, this is all pretty standard and things, so you ask, why don't I just compile my kernel with that? Well, the problem is the card's on IRQ 5. The OSSFree drivers only support IRQ's 7, 9, 10, 11. Solution to this problem? Windows 95. While I'm sure you can use isapnp to do the same thing I'm about to descibre below, I had to use Windows. In the device manager setup for your card, you should make sure the Automatic Configuraiton box is UNCHECKED! Windows just LOVES to hijack settings, so we're not going to let it. After unchecking this box, you should be able to simply double click the Interrupt setting and change it. You may have to change your card to "Basic Configuration 002" which is what I had to. It didn't seem to want to let me change anything if I had 000 or 001. Ok, now that we're all set there, exit out of tbe device manager. 'Would you like to reboot?" Yep, you want to. Pay careful attention to the PnP device listing your BIOS spits out, the IRQ and DMA settings on this list should match what you used in Windows. If all is good, edit your /etc/isapnp.conf. (Oh yeah, I did mention you need isapnptools?) Uncomment the correct settings for the first device function on the card and uncommrnet (ACT Y). The rest of the device functions below the audio handle the onboard IDE on my card, and a bunch of other stuff that was thrown on the card which I don't use so I really don't care what they are. In your kernel config selection (I use menuconfig, so adapt as neccessary my instructions) you want to goto the sound submenu. The following are checked for me: [*] Sound Card support [*] Generic OPL2/OPL3 FM Synthesizer support [*] MPU-401 support [*] Microsoft Sound System support [*] FM Synthesizer (YM3812/OPL-3) support Below those, you should see the places to enter the values in for the various settings. Plug in your MS/WSS interrupt (530 for me) and the IRQ (for me, 9) Your MPU-401 should be set to whatever is applicable for the card (330 here) and the IRQ will be the same as the MS/WSS selection. Use OSSFree3.9 in kernel From here you should compile the kernel, install it, and reboot. If your lucky, you'll have sound. If not, keep trying ... or spend $20 for OSS, it will save you a lot of hassle.