Hi there. I recently installed Wary Puppy 5.5 on my 16+ year old Dell Inspiron 7000. So far I am very pleased with the distro as the laptop is more responsive than I have seen it in years. However, the one area where I am having issues is with my sound card. Although I am not entirely new to Linux, I do not consider myself a power user, and I am a newbie where Puppy Linux is concerned. After reading through several other forum posts, I believe that I have confirmed that my sound card is not being detected. When I run "Kirk's Multiple Sound Card Wiazrd" I receive a message stating: Unable to find any sound card. Please press Cancel.
When I execute "aplay -l" from the console, I receive the following output:
aplay: device_list:223: no soundcards found...
A Google search for the specs on my laptop indicate that I have an ESS 3D Surround sound card. I'm guessing that I'll probably need to provide some additional information before anyone can truly help me, but I'm not sure what that may be at this point.
Can someone help to get me started?
Thanks in advance!
Wary Puppy 5.5 not detecting sound card ((Solved)
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oasiscorpmse
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Wary Puppy 5.5 not detecting sound card ((Solved)
Last edited by oasiscorpmse on Tue 24 Feb 2015, 23:37, edited 1 time in total.
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OscarTalks
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oasiscorpmse
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Yes, the sound card was previously working under Windows XP. I did try to install several other Linux distros on my machine, but they simply would not install.OscarTalks wrote:Was the soundcard previously working when you had some other Linux (or other) operating system installed on this machine?
Have you checked to see if the soundcard has been disabled in the bios settings?
Any sound modules listed in /proc/asound/modules ?
I checked the BIOS, but there is no setting to disable the sound card.
My /proc/asound/modules file contains no entries whatsoever.
Are there other settings that I should check?
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OscarTalks
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Are you sure the machine is so old? Does it have a working optical drive? If so I would suggest trying other Puppies. Burn a live CD of Slacko or TahrPup or Dpup Wheezy or Precise and try that. As far as I know the modules are associated with the kernel so if you try a different kernel (which will be the case with a different Pup) you may find that the results are better on any given piece of hardware.
Oscar in England
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oasiscorpmse
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Yes, I am sure. I actually purchased the laptop from Dell in October of 1998 for $4,250. It was top-of-the-line at the time and was one of the first laptops to have a 15" display and a DVD drive. It even came with the upgraded 8GB HDD and was maxed out with 256MB of RAM.OscarTalks wrote:Are you sure the machine is so old? Does it have a working optical drive? If so I would suggest trying other Puppies. Burn a live CD of Slacko or TahrPup or Dpup Wheezy or Precise and try that. As far as I know the modules are associated with the kernel so if you try a different kernel (which will be the case with a different Pup) you may find that the results are better on any given piece of hardware.
Needless to say, it does not have the same response time running today's OSes as it did back then.I did try Slacko before going with Wary, but the machine was not as responsive with Slacko. I have to admit that I did not think to check my sound card with Slacko. I will try it again using the LiveCD and report back my results.
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oasiscorpmse
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Okay, I rebooted my machine using a Slacko 5.7 LiveCD and my sound is working with that distro. Executing "aplay -l" now yields the following output:OscarTalks wrote:Burn a live CD of Slacko or TahrPup or Dpup Wheezy or Precise and try that. As far as I know the modules are associated with the kernel so if you try a different kernel (which will be the case with a different Pup) you may find that the results are better on any given piece of hardware.
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: E2 [ESS ES1968 (Maestro 2)], device 0: ESS Maestro [ESS Maestro]
Subdevices: 4/4
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
So does this basically mean that if I want to use my sound card that I will need to stick with Slacko instead of Wary? Wary seems to go a bit easier on my system resources, but I would prefer to have sound.
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OscarTalks
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So looks like the problem is just that the specific module for your soundcard is missing or not working in Wary. Pity, but these things do happen. I would experiment a bit with some of the other Puppies and see which one works best with everything fully functional. You could try Racy 5.5 which is almost the same as Wary 5.5 but does have an early 3 series kernel as opposed to the 2.6 series kernel in Wary.
Oscar in England
Hi...oasiscorpmse wrote:I actually purchased the laptop from Dell in October of 1998 for $4,250. It was top-of-the-line at the time and was one of the first laptops to have a 15" display and a DVD drive. It even came with the upgraded 8GB HDD and was maxed out with 256MB of RAM.
Welcome to the forum
For $4,250, I'm assuming it came with a personalized Gucci diamond studded carrying case?
Seriously though, if you have an extra CD to burn, you could give LegacyOS a try. You can get information on the different versions and download them here.
Regards...
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Had a HP kayak and apparently it went for a similar price tag.... circa 1996....not me...was fairly second hand when we got it.
It had ISA sound which can be a pig on linux but sounds like the op has something working.
Dont see how a newer kernel could help an older machine but hey...more likely wary is just stripped of drivers.
Lucid is a good bunny..... and ok for the latest crappiest software...otherwise a puppy 4 might give better performance.
not sure if 2.14x is still a handy one for such things.
Also puppy 4 plus have peed around with the sound initialisation and seems to have had problems ever since looking on the forum...I went back to how alsa do it and thats works fine.
Mike
It had ISA sound which can be a pig on linux but sounds like the op has something working.
Dont see how a newer kernel could help an older machine but hey...more likely wary is just stripped of drivers.
Lucid is a good bunny..... and ok for the latest crappiest software...otherwise a puppy 4 might give better performance.
not sure if 2.14x is still a handy one for such things.
Also puppy 4 plus have peed around with the sound initialisation and seems to have had problems ever since looking on the forum...I went back to how alsa do it and thats works fine.
Mike
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oasiscorpmse
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Thank you for your help @OscarTalks. Yes, it does appear that Wary may not be too fond of my sound card. I appreciate you helping me to figure that out.OscarTalks wrote:So looks like the problem is just that the specific module for your soundcard is missing or not working in Wary. Pity, but these things do happen. I would experiment a bit with some of the other Puppies and see which one works best with everything fully functional. You could try Racy 5.5 which is almost the same as Wary 5.5 but does have an early 3 series kernel as opposed to the 2.6 series kernel in Wary.
Hi @ardvark. You would think so, but alas it only came with a standard black Dell laptop bag. However, it has proven to be very durable over the years.ardvark wrote:For $4,250, I'm assuming it came with a personalized Gucci diamond studded carrying case?
I followed your advice and tried out LegacyOS. I like it. It has a number of very useful applications right out of the box. The desktop sidebar is a nice touch, although I didn't keep it running as it was placing a strain on my already limited system resources. I found Streamtuner to be a much more useful application than the default internet radio application that is bundled with Wary and Slacko. I think that I prefer Seamonkey to Konqueror and Opera though. Anyway thank you for the suggestion; I was completely unfamiliar with LegacyOS.ardvark wrote:Seriously though, if you have an extra CD to burn, you could give LegacyOS a try.
Thank you for the suggestion @darry1966. I'm not familiar with 525 retro, but I'll track it down and give it a look.darry1966 wrote:Why not 525 retro by James C it has 4.31's kernel and runs great on old hardware.
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oasiscorpmse
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Hi @mikeb. Sorry, I didn't mean to leave you out of the equation. I do appreciate your input. Unfortunately I got distracted by some of the old arcade games that came with the LegacyOS distro that @ardvark had recommended, and many hours of my spare time passed without my notice.mikeb wrote:I am sure my suggestions based on similar experience are of no value
mike
I may have to uninstall them in order to remove the temptation. Anyway, I am good for now with LegacyOS, but I am planning to try out some of the other suggestions that you all have so kindly suggested over the next week or so.Thanks again!