[PlanetCCRMA] Cardbus Woes / VXpocket

[Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano]

> > You may want to test drive a planetary 2.4.20-pre4
> > kernel just for the fun of it :-)
> 
> Thanks, Fernando, this 2.4.20 upgrade hurled me
> forward.  the cardmgr subsystem now wakes up, gets
> the VXpocket to ident itself, etc.  it complained
> about "unrecognized card". a little research led me
> to discover there was no entry in 
> /etc/pcmcia/config for my card. so i inserted a card
> definiton block as well as as a device definition. 
> now the pcmcia system starts w/o error -- i can even
> hot-plug the VXpocket which act evokes modprobes for
> snd-vxpocket. so it appears that i've got the
> cardmgr seeking out the correct driver now.

Good. 

> however the VXpocket still isn't working-- it seems
> the built-in i810 always gets setup as primary snd
> card. alsaconf only finds the i810, it has never
> seen the VXpocket i will pursue this further in a
> few days when time permits. i'm seeing a failure
> "alsa aready started" but i haven't figured out yet
> which stimulus is responsible.

"alsaconf" at this point only works with pci and isa devices, I think.
It will not detect pcmcia or usb devices yet so those have to be
configured "by hand". Your modules.conf should have a section that looks
like this:

# --- ALSACONF verion 0.9.0 ---
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
options snd major=116 cards_limit=1 device_mode=0666
options snd-intel8x0 index=0 id=Intel
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---

You can change it to this so that the first card is the vxpocket card
(if that is what you want):

# --- ALSACONF verion 0.9.0 ---
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-vxpocket
alias snd-card-1 snd-intel8x0
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-slot-1 snd-card-1
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-1-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-1-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-1-12 snd-pcm-oss
options snd major=116 cards_limit=2 device_mode=0666
options snd-vxpocket index=0 id=VXPocket
options snd-intel8x0 index=1 id=Intel
post-install snd-vxpocket vxloader
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---

The post-install is needed to load the firmware into the card (see
message at the end of this email). I don't have a card to test...

The "already started" message from the alsasound startup script is to be
expected. The pcmcia is handled by the hotplug subsystem and its driver
is started early in the boot process, before alsasound has a chance to
execute. When it is executed it finds that alsa "has already started"
(although that is not enterily true) and complains. The same thing
happens for usb devices. Takashi has added a feature a couple of days
ago to the alsa drivers that should make it possible to rewrite the
alsasound script to take this into account. 

-- Fernando

Takashi wrote:
Hi,

I've changed the boot-behavior of VX-pocket drivers on the CVS.
In the new version, the firmwares are not in the driver source but in
the external directory to be transferred by an external program.

If you update the cvs version, please do the following:

- build vxloader utility in alsa-tools cvs.
  install it.  the firmwares will be installed in either
  /usr/share/vxloader or /usr/local/share/vxloader
- rebuild the alsa-driver modules.  install them.
- add an entry to /etc/modules.conf

        post-install snd-vxpocket vxloader
or
        post-install snd-vxp440 vxloader

The new driver, snd-vx222, will need the similar configuration.
If you encounter any problems after update, please let me know!

Takashi