Sound on Inspiron - more details

Other parameters

You can use different WSS I/O address as long as the BIOS SETUP and /etc/conf.modules match.
Also I was told that it might be better to use IRQ9 instead of IRQ5, since IRQ5 might default to 8-bit mode, but maybe not.

Problems - more detailed look

I was told to expect the following from cat /dev/sndstat under Audio Devices:

0: cs4232 (cs4231) (DUPLEX)

which is not what I get.

MIDI does not work, even in Sound Blaster configuration (tested by doom).

When using mixer (by aumix or xmixer) CD volume and balance are seen as "Line 1" instead of on "CD".

Sometimes when playing with the sound configuration after reboot I had no sound at all, not even console beep nor modem sounds. It can be cured by pressing mute key [Fn-End] twice.

I don't know how to test that everything works. i.e. 16 bit sound (as opposed to 8-bit emulation), MIDI, and others. I don't know much about sound cards.

Quake sometimes has rythmic clicks, it has to be restarted several times to make them go away.

Sound Blaster Pro configuration

One of my first /etc/conf.modules files looked like this:

alias sound sb
options -k sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1
alias midi opl3
options -k opl3 io=0x388

I got it with help of sndconfig.
It seemed to work, but I was told that this configuration uses Sound Blaster Pro emulation mode which only gives 8-bit sound.
Here is output of /dev/sndstat for this configuration:

Sound Driver:3.5.4-960630
Kernel: Linux host.subdomain.domain 2.0.32 #1 Wed Nov 19 00:46:45 EST 1997 i586
Config options: 0

Installed drivers: 

Card config: 

Audio devices:
0: Sound Blaster Pro (3.2)

Synth devices:
0: Yamaha OPL-3

Midi devices:
0: Sound Blaster

Timers:
0: System clock

Mixers:
0: Sound Blaster

and these are boot messages reported by dmesg:

Soundblaster audio driver Copyright (C) by Hannu Savolainen 1993-1996
SB 3.2 detected OK (220)
Installed 0
YM3812 and OPL-3 driver Copyright (C) by Hannu Savolainen, Rob Hooft 1993-1996

Tomasz Barszczak