[gentoo-user] DVD Drive Question

[gentoo-user] DVD Drive Question

[Colleen Beamer]

Hi guys,

A while back, I wrote looking for help because I thought I was having
problems with Alsa on my Dell XPS M1710 laptop .  It takes me a while,
but I finally clued in that the problem *might not* be Alsa.  Today, I
tested me theory .... my ripped music files are stored on an Iomega
external hard drive, which was attached to my desktop.  I attached the
drive to my laptop and I can play and hear my music files just fine.

I'm not thinking that the problem might be the DVD-RW drive - it's a
Ricoh and the specific problem that I was having was not being able to
hear audio CD's when using kscd.  I googled and found a blog by someone
who had an Inspiron 9300 with a Ricoh drive.  All that really was said
was that DMA was not enabled my default and to add a certain line to the
kernel header file (instructions were more explicit than this) and then
recompile the kernel.

Before I get myself in a pickle in an area where I have no experience, I
thought I'd ask the list for thoughts/opinions/advice.

Regards,

Colleen
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Re: [gentoo-user] DVD Drive Question

[Stratos Psomadakis]

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1)if  you mean that you have no experince with kernel
configuration/complation,i suggest tha you try it...it's very useful to
know how to properly conifgure your kernel ;)
2)generally,you should enable dma for dvd/cd drives and hard disks...you
can check the howto at gentoo-wiki...and especially the section about
dma:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Use_hdparm_to_improve_IDE_device_performance#DMA_mode_-d
3)can you give the url of the blog?

hope that i helped...
O/H Colleen Beamer έγραψε:
> Hi guys,
>
> A while back, I wrote looking for help because I thought I was having
> problems with Alsa on my Dell XPS M1710 laptop .  It takes me a while,
> but I finally clued in that the problem *might not* be Alsa.  Today, I
> tested me theory .... my ripped music files are stored on an Iomega
> external hard drive, which was attached to my desktop.  I attached the
> drive to my laptop and I can play and hear my music files just fine.
>
> I'm not thinking that the problem might be the DVD-RW drive - it's a
> Ricoh and the specific problem that I was having was not being able to
> hear audio CD's when using kscd.  I googled and found a blog by someone
> who had an Inspiron 9300 with a Ricoh drive.  All that really was said
> was that DMA was not enabled my default and to add a certain line to the
> kernel header file (instructions were more explicit than this) and then
> recompile the kernel.
>
> Before I get myself in a pickle in an area where I have no experience, I
> thought I'd ask the list for thoughts/opinions/advice.
>
> Regards,
>
> Colleen
>   



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Re: [gentoo-user] DVD Drive Question

[Colleen Beamer]

Stratos Psomadakis wrote:
> 1)if  you mean that you have no experince with kernel
> configuration/complation,i suggest tha you try it...it's very useful to
> know how to properly conifgure your kernel ;)
>   

I've built the kernel many times using 'genkernel --menuconfig all'.  I
meant that the blog I read said to go in and edit the kernel header file
and place a certain line of text into it related to DMA
> 2)generally,you should enable dma for dvd/cd drives and hard disks...you
> can check the howto at gentoo-wiki...and especially the section about
> dma:
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Use_hdparm_to_improve_IDE_device_performance#DMA_mode_-da
>   
 
I already tried rebuilding the kernel to ensure that DMA was compiled
into it.  It doesn't have any affect on the DVD drive - with or without
DMA compiled into the kernel, there is still no sound when trying to
play an audio CD.
> 3)can you give the url of the blog?
>   

As requested, the blog address is:

http://krosswindz.blogspot.com/2005/10/gentoo-linux-on-dell-inspiron-9300.html


Regards,

Colleen
> hope that i helped...
> O/H Colleen Beamer έγραψε:
>   
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> A while back, I wrote looking for help because I thought I was having
>> problems with Alsa on my Dell XPS M1710 laptop .  It takes me a while,
>> but I finally clued in that the problem *might not* be Alsa.  Today, I
>> tested me theory .... my ripped music files are stored on an Iomega
>> external hard drive, which was attached to my desktop.  I attached the
>> drive to my laptop and I can play and hear my music files just fine.
>>
>> I'm not thinking that the problem might be the DVD-RW drive - it's a
>> Ricoh and the specific problem that I was having was not being able to
>> hear audio CD's when using kscd.  I googled and found a blog by someone
>> who had an Inspiron 9300 with a Ricoh drive.  All that really was said
>> was that DMA was not enabled my default and to add a certain line to the
>> kernel header file (instructions were more explicit than this) and then
>> recompile the kernel.
>>
>> Before I get myself in a pickle in an area where I have no experience, I
>> thought I'd ask the list for thoughts/opinions/advice.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Colleen
>>   
>>     
>
>
>   

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Re: [gentoo-user] DVD Drive Question

[Albert Hopkins]

On Sun, 2007-07-22 at 20:56 -0400, Colleen Beamer wrote:
> I already tried rebuilding the kernel to ensure that DMA was compiled
> into it.  It doesn't have any affect on the DVD drive - with or
> without
> DMA compiled into the kernel, there is still no sound when trying to
> play an audio CD. 

Are you sure that the CD track is unmuted (look in alsamixer or
similar)?
--
Albert W. Hopkins

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Re: [gentoo-user] DVD Drive Question

[Mick]

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On Monday 23 July 2007 02:33, Albert Hopkins wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-07-22 at 20:56 -0400, Colleen Beamer wrote:
> > I already tried rebuilding the kernel to ensure that DMA was compiled
> > into it.  It doesn't have any affect on the DVD drive - with or
> > without
> > DMA compiled into the kernel, there is still no sound when trying to
> > play an audio CD.
>
> Are you sure that the CD track is unmuted (look in alsamixer or
> similar)?

I second this and think that the DMA is a red herring. So first things first: 
run alsamixer in a terminal as a plain user and make sure CD is not 
showing "MM" and is set at a high enough setting.

Then to see what's up with dma:  look at lshw to find its "logical name:".  
Then use the logical name to run:

# hdparm -I /dev/hdc

# hdparm /dev/hdc

(on my machine /dev/hdc is my DVD drive's logical name)

HTH.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] DVD Drive Question

[Jesús Guerrero]

On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 13:11:18 -0400
Colleen Beamer <colleen.beamer@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm not thinking that the problem might be the DVD-RW drive - it's a
> Ricoh and the specific problem that I was having was not being able to
> hear audio CD's when using kscd.  I googled and found a blog by someone
> who had an Inspiron 9300 with a Ricoh drive.  All that really was said
> was that DMA was not enabled my default and to add a certain line to the
> kernel header file (instructions were more explicit than this) and then
> recompile the kernel.

I would first the obvious: your laptop might not have an audio cable
attached to the audio output of your drive, or the drive might not have
such output at all, or maybe your mother board has not an audiocd/aux
audio input port. Try any audio program that can do digital audio
extraction. Xmms can do that, I can't think of any other, maybe kscd
has it, but you might need to enable it manually on its config. I don't 
really know.

If that works, we found the problem.

DMA problems are usually related to the performance of the drive, and the
amount of cpu cycles the bus sucks to do any job (with DMA mastering the bus
can work unattended, making your cpu happy and your battery even happier),
but, unless the performance is so so so bad, this is not usually a problem
to play an audiocd (they can be player in 1x drives, I swear cause I had one
years ago, and there were no UDMA by that time).
-- 
Jesús Guerrero <i92guboj@terra.es>
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Re: [gentoo-user] DVD Drive Question

[Colleen Beamer]

Jesús Guerrero wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 13:11:18 -0400
> Colleen Beamer <colleen.beamer@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> I'm not thinking that the problem might be the DVD-RW drive - it's a
>> Ricoh and the specific problem that I was having was not being able to
>> hear audio CD's when using kscd.  I googled and found a blog by someone
>> who had an Inspiron 9300 with a Ricoh drive.  All that really was said
>> was that DMA was not enabled my default and to add a certain line to the
>> kernel header file (instructions were more explicit than this) and then
>> recompile the kernel.
>>     
>
> I would first the obvious: your laptop might not have an audio cable
> attached to the audio output of your drive, or the drive might not have
> such output at all, or maybe your mother board has not an audiocd/aux
> audio input port. Try any audio program that can do digital audio
> extraction. Xmms can do that, I can't think of any other, maybe kscd
> has it, but you might need to enable it manually on its config. I don't 
> really know.
>
> If that works, we found the problem.
>   

Well, in response to this, I ripped a track from a CD using
kaudiocreator.  The track ripped, encoded and played fine from the hard
drive.

I'm sure there isn't a problem with the audio cable not being
connected.  The laptop is a Dell and it is pretested before leaving the
factory.  The thing is, the laptop came with Windows Vista on it. 
Windows Vista got booted the first time that I turned the laptop on to
the point where I got the setup screen that you get the first time. 
This was only because I wasn't quick enough hitting the F2 button to get
into the BIOS.  I never set Vista up, I installed Gentoo and the laptop
does not dual boot.

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