[Alsa-user] trident - disappearing ADC/DAC loopback

[Steven F. <sf...@io...>]

I'm trying to upgrade to ALSA 0.9.x, because I want to develop
software that will utilize the ALSA API. I am using a shark predator
card with the Trident 4DWave chip. I was able to get
Kernel 2.4.3 - 0.5.9 to produce sound but not 
Kernel 2.4.3 - 0.9.0pre4.

I was able to get the drivers, libs and utilities to compile and install
and load the driver without incident, however Can not switch the ADC/DAC
Loopback parameter. One time when using the program alsamixer ADC/DAC
loopback came up as a parameter and I was able to produce sound by
switching ADC/DAC loopback, however on all subsequent tries ADC/DAC does
not appear in alsamixer's list of parameters. I have also tried amixer and
alsactl, however ADC/DAC loopback does not appear on the parameter list
produced by those programs ether.  Does anyone else use 0.9.0pre4 with a
trident card? Does ADC/DAC loopback appear in your parameter list? Has it
ever disappeared?

Has anyone had a similar experience or have any suggestions on what I
should try?


PS. I also discovered something else that I found odd....

I have written some scripts to install and remove both 0.5.9 and
0.9.0pre4.  This scripts works by creating symbolic links in the
/lib/module/2.4.4/misc/ directory to the desired modules. I always
shutdown all sound and mixer apps then rmmod'ing all kernel modules
related to ALSA.  If I start out by running 0.5.9, I can get PCM
sound. But, if I remove 0.5.9 and run with 0.9.0, I can not get sound.
The odd thing is that, if I then switch back to 0.5.9, I still can not
get sound! And, if I use amixer it generated a parameter list that is
different than the original time I had 0.5.9 loaded.  If I then leave
the 0.5.9 setup in place and re-boot (warm or cold), I can once again
get sound and, the parameter list goes back to the original form.
From this experiment I can tell that 0.9.0 does something to the card
that is not reset when 0.9.0 is removed nor when 0.5.9 is loaded. Only
a re-boot will reset the card I don't know if this has anything to do
with my problem, but I thought I decided to include it in case it lead
to a clue as to what was happening.

=======================================================================
 Steven Feil              | Gram-pa, back at the turn of the      .~.  
 Programmer/Developer     | century, why did people use an        /V\  
 sf...@io...             | operating system, when they were not // \\ 
                          | allowed to see the source code?      (X_X) 
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