Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2002 13:39:33 -0800 From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@monkeys.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Novice question about testing sound cards Message-ID: <97247.1036359573@monkeys.com>
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Greetings, I have to confess massive ignorance about sound cards. I haven't used these things much in the past, if at all. Anyway, I just installed 4.7-RELEASE on a new system that's got an ancient and crusty ISA Sound Blaster 16 PnP card (that I bought second-hand) installed in it. I also generated and installed a new kernel that I believe contains all of the necessary stuff to support this card, specifically I added: device pcm device sbc The card is now clearly recognized on boot up, however I'm still not 100% that it's working. I tried using a couple of CD player utilities and no sound came out if the speakers. Ok, so question: What's the simplest and easiest way to simply check to see if a given sound card is working or not? I gather that it is _not_ as simple as just cat'ing some .mp3 file to one of the /dev/dsp* device files, correct? When answering, please understand that I have *not* gotten X11 up and/or configured on the system in question, nor do I wish to do so at the present time. (So any suggestions that I try running some fancy-schmancy click-and-drool music player will not be helpful.) Also, please be advised that my CD drive is an EIDE (not SCSI) drive, and that I _don't_ have any wires running directly from the CD drive to the sound card. (I probably should have, but I don't happen to have any such little audio wires lying aound.) Anyway, I assume that I can get some sound files of some kind into this box (perhaps via floppy, since it ain't on the network yet) without having to get some sound files off of, say, a music CD. P.S. Speaking of /dev/dsp*, how come `man dsp' doesn't produce anything? Ain't device files supposed to be documented? I sure would like to know what would happen if I just cat'ed some files to /dev/dsp0. (Maybe I'll just try it and find out. I assume that the system won't catch fire. :-) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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