[PD] [ot] rme hammerfall

Ivica Bukvic ico at fuse.net
Sat Dec 6 00:30:47 CET 2003


> -----Original Message-----
> From: pd-list-admin at iem.at [mailto:pd-list-admin at iem.at] On Behalf Of
> derek holzer
> Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 5:11 PM
> To: pd-list at iem.at
> Cc: Tim Blechmann
> Subject: Re: [PD] [ot] rme hammerfall
> 
> Hi Tim,
> 
> So, you ready for the HDSP challenge? ;-)
> 
> I've been fighting with mine for a good time now, so maybe I have a
few
> words or other concerns to bring up here:
> 
> 1) I don't know the status of this firmware problem that Johannes T.
> brings up. Supposedly, newer versions of the card's firmware aren't
> supported. I have an older card which I downgraded the firmware on
> anyway, but it might be good to ask on the ALSA list about this if you
> are buying a brand-spanking-new one.
> 

I perhaps can shed some light on this one, even though I've not used
HDSP in Linux extensively. From what I understand is that the new
firmware versions of HDSP use perhaps a different ID for the card that
is not being detected by the existing soundcard's driver. It may be that
a simple addition to the driver's card ID description is what is needed
(someone please correct me here if I am wrong). If you are looking for
assistance on this matter on the Alsa list please make sure to include
all the relevant info, i.e. firmware revision, and the Card ID as it is
detected by your system (i.e. lspci) so that the people who know how to
fix the driver can do so.

> 2) I couldn't get my PCMCIA bridge [laptop= ASUS L7 series] to work at
> all with Mandrake or Red Hat. This means it is sketchy at best to use
> the cardbus interface [for me, with my hardware and these distros.]
> Debian and Gentoo work fine, however. Weird. What distro do you use?
>

This is most likely due to the way kernel and its modules have been
compiled. Even if you happen to have these problems a simple recompile
of the PCMCIA module, overwriting the kernel-installed ones should do
the trick. As a rule of thumb individual modules for particular hardware
are always more up-to-date than the ones found in the official "stable"
kernels.
 
> 3) Right now, with ALSA 0.9.8 packages from Gentoo, I can only use the
> HDSP+Alsa via Jack. Otherwise, I get errors about non-interleaved mode
> which I didn't get using older versions of Alsa under Debian, and
which
> I don't get with new Alsa versions using the PCI card under Red
> Hat/Planet CCRMA. Go figure! But it performs quite well with Jack!
Jack
> can handle the 8x2 analog channels, plus more if you feel like having
> lots of internal routing [i.e. virtual ports to record in Rezound or
> Ardour, FX sends + returns to Jack-Rack]. This is my favorite thing
> about Jack!

This is because more of this kind of stuff is now part of the asoundrc
file where you can declare virtual devices which present you with
various configurations and or I/O formats. Granted, asoundrc has been
having the sketchiest documentation I've ever seen in the OSS community,
but things have been improving rather rapidly lately.

> 4) Alsa has some nice utilities for the HDSP, such as hdspmixer or
> hdspconf, and also tools you will NEED to run the card, such as
> hdsploader!

Best wishes,

Ivica Ico Bukvic, composer & multimedia sculptor
http://meowing.ccm.uc.edu/~ico





More information about the Pd-list mailing list