Skip to contentSkip to conversation

Status of ALi5451(trident)?

DISCUSSION Neale Banks 2 participants 7 messages Jul 10, 2002 – Jul 17, 2002 Sound

lore
Share & tools
lore
#0 lore raw

Greetings,

What is the status (e.g. supposedly working, supported and maintained?) of the Trident driver with the Ali5451 chipset (both regular audio and MIDI synth)?

Issues I have on the Toshiba Satellite 1800[1] include:

1) not working[2] with 2.2.21
2) MIDI not working with 2.2.21 or 2.4.18
3) MIDI code appears to be removed in 2.4.17 source (is this a sign?)
4) Lack of findable documentation on what's supposed to work and how (yes, I'm prepared to collate something for linux/Documentation/sound/)

Thanks,
Neale.

[1] The Toshi 1800's lspci -v output includes:

00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5451 PCI South Bridge Audio (rev 01)
Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems: Unknown device 0001
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
I/O ports at ed00
Memory at f7efe000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2

[2] OK, "not working" isn't really a proper report. I get this logged when something tries to open the audio:

kernel: trident: drain_dac, dma timeout?

What else should I be reporting about this?

#1 lore raw

check on www.alsa-project.org, and ask on the alsa-user list. iirc, it's supported.

Quoted 38 lines · Neale Banks

Greetings,

What is the status (e.g. supposedly working, supported and maintained?) of the Trident driver with the Ali5451 chipset (both regular audio and MIDI synth)?

Issues I have on the Toshiba Satellite 1800[1] include:

1) not working[2] with 2.2.21
2) MIDI not working with 2.2.21 or 2.4.18
3) MIDI code appears to be removed in 2.4.17 source (is this a sign?)
4) Lack of findable documentation on what's supposed to work and how (yes, I'm prepared to collate something for linux/Documentation/sound/)

Thanks,
Neale.

[1] The Toshi 1800's lspci -v output includes:

00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5451 PCI South Bridge Audio (rev 01)
Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems: Unknown device 0001
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
I/O ports at ed00
Memory at f7efe000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2

[2] OK, "not working" isn't really a proper report. I get this logged when something tries to open the audio:

kernel: trident: drain_dac, dma timeout?

What else should I be reporting about this?

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-sound" in the body of a message to [email protected]
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

#2 lore raw
In reply to Neale Banks
Quoted 2 lines · Joern Nettingsmeier

check on www.alsa-project.org, and ask on the alsa-user list. iirc, it's supported.

Are you suggesting that the current drivers in 2.2 and 2.4 kernels (OSS?) aren't worth using?

That is, that I should just give up on those and use ALSA?

Thanks,
Neale.

#3 lore raw
In reply to Neale Banks
Quoted 10 lines · Neale Banks
Quoted 2 lines · Joern Nettingsmeier

check on www.alsa-project.org, and ask on the alsa-user list. iirc, it's supported.

Are you suggesting that the current drivers in 2.2 and 2.4 kernels (OSS?) aren't worth using?

That is, that I should just give up on those and use ALSA?

basically, yes. the oss drivers are probably perfectly ok, but the whole alsa architecture is superior to oss, although more complex. if you just need simple audio playback/recording, oss is fine. for anything more demanding (low-latency operation, multichannel or even full-duplex with some cards), go for alsa.
it's going to be "official" soon, it's already in the current development kernel.

btw, there is a linux-audio-user list at
http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad, in case you have questions concerning which application to choose for a job etc.

#4 lore raw
In reply to Neale Banks
Quoted 1 line · Joern Nettingsmeier

Neale Banks wrote:

[...]

Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 4 lines

Are you suggesting that the current drivers in 2.2 and 2.4 kernels (OSS?) aren't worth using?

That is, that I should just give up on those and use ALSA?

basically, yes. the oss drivers are probably perfectly ok,

'tis not my experience :-(

Quoted 5 lines

but the whole
alsa architecture is superior to oss, although more complex. if you just need simple audio playback/recording, oss is fine. for anything more demanding (low-latency operation, multichannel or even full-duplex with some cards), go for alsa.

My immediate requirements are fairly mediochre:

1) audio for mpeg video playback
2) midi synth for rosegarden

Quoted 2 lines

it's going to be "official" soon, it's already in the current development kernel.

Yes, ALSA appears to be coming in 2.5 - but my interest right now is in 2.2 and 2.4.

I'm somewhat astonished that (a) OSS sound doesn't want to work for me in 2.2 and (b) MIDI code appears to be missing from the OSS driver in 2.4.

I have that awful Arthur Dentish feeling that I've missed something here....

Quoted 3 lines

btw, there is a linux-audio-user list at
http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad, in case you have questions concerning which application to choose for a job etc.

Not one of my immediate problems, but thanks for the pointer.

Regards,
Neale.

#5 lore raw
In reply to Neale Banks
Quoted 22 lines · Neale Banks
Quoted 1 line · Joern Nettingsmeier

Neale Banks wrote:

[...]

Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 4 lines

Are you suggesting that the current drivers in 2.2 and 2.4 kernels (OSS?) aren't worth using?

That is, that I should just give up on those and use ALSA?

basically, yes. the oss drivers are probably perfectly ok,

'tis not my experience :-(

Quoted 5 lines

but the whole
alsa architecture is superior to oss, although more complex. if you just need simple audio playback/recording, oss is fine. for anything more demanding (low-latency operation, multichannel or even full-duplex with some cards), go for alsa.

My immediate requirements are fairly mediochre:

Quoted 8 lines

1) audio for mpeg video playback
2) midi synth for rosegarden

Quoted 2 lines

it's going to be "official" soon, it's already in the current development kernel.

Yes, ALSA appears to be coming in 2.5 - but my interest right now is in 2.2 and 2.4.

alsa is widely used for 2.2 and 2.4, only you have to compile the modules yourself (they are not shipped and built along with the kernel).

Quoted 2 lines

I'm somewhat astonished that (a) OSS sound doesn't want to work for me in 2.2 and (b) MIDI code appears to be missing from the OSS driver in 2.4.

alsa's midi sequencer is really very nice. you can hook just about anything together that speaks alsa-seq. check out the kaconnect alsa midi patchbay, for instance (suse.de/~mana iirc).

give it a try. from your past experience, it can be any worse :)

best,

jörn

Quoted 11 lines

I have that awful Arthur Dentish feeling that I've missed something here....

Quoted 3 lines

btw, there is a linux-audio-user list at
http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad, in case you have questions concerning which application to choose for a job etc.

Not one of my immediate problems, but thanks for the pointer.

Regards,
Neale.

#6 lore raw
In reply to Neale Banks

Hi jörn,

Quoted 2 lines

alsa is widely used for 2.2 and 2.4, only you have to compile the modules yourself (they are not shipped and built along with the kernel).

OK, it wasn't too painful to compile (only one source tweak).

But I'm still coming to grips with the requirements for "configuring ALSA" (ALSA may indeed be superior in its capabilities and flexibility, but OSS is sure nice in its simplicity - just modprobe for your card).

Quoted 8 lines
Quoted 2 lines

I'm somewhat astonished that (a) OSS sound doesn't want to work for me in 2.2 and (b) MIDI code appears to be missing from the OSS driver in 2.4.

alsa's midi sequencer is really very nice. you can hook just about anything together that speaks alsa-seq. check out the kaconnect alsa midi patchbay, for instance (suse.de/~mana iirc).

give it a try. from your past experience, it can be any worse :)

As you can se from my other post, the problem is that I don't get a MIDI synth with either OSS or ALSA :-(

Hopefully I've missed something *really* basic.

Thanks,
Neale.