Re: [linux-audio-user] Midi Woes

2006/11/13, Clemens Ladisch <cladisch@email-addr-hidden>:
> > The problem in my case is it doesn't work...
> > Onboard MPU401 has never worked too well for me in the latest kernels,
> > tested on a an asus nforce2 based MB and on an ASRock "el-cheapo"
> > SIS7012 based MB, both of them using the intel8x0 sound module.
>
> The intel8x0 modules has nothing to do with MIDI.

It had to do with MIDI until a few kernel revisions ago.
The intel8x0 had an "mpu_port" parameter which would activate the midi
port (yes from within the codec module). In fact the mpu401 module
wasn't even being loaded when the module was working this way, if I
remember correctly.
That has been changed recently, mpu401 management has been moved from
the intel8x0 module into the mpu401* ones and the mpu_port has been
deprecated.
You can hunt ALSA changelogs for the intel8x0 module if you don't believe me ;)

>
> > It doesn't work in that if I try playing a midi file the kernel
> > complains on syslog about weird erros.
>
> "weird" doesn't tell me much,
> but it's probably because of a wrong port address.
I didn't have a syslog from the box handy when I replied that's why I
haven't included it, I'll do it now.
Whenever I try to access the MPU port (like when playing a midi file)
I am getting this:

cmd: 0xff failed at 0x300 (status = 0xff, data = 0xff)

My MPU port is set at IRQ 0x300 DMA 5, loading the module with or
without pnp as in:

modprobe -v snd_mpu401 pnp=1 (Yes I know pnp=1 it's the default I am
just being paranoid here)

or:

modprobe -v snd_mpu401 pnp=0 port=0x300 irq=5

leads to this syslog:

[17179872.004000] pnp: Device 00:09 activated.
[17179872.004000] pnp: Device 00:09 disabled.

I just noticed this now, it seems like it's trying to initialize the
MPU port but silently fails?
I tried setting my DMA and IRQ to different combos and have passed
those parameters to the mpu module accordingly, but that didn't help
either.
There wasn't any address sharing going on for any of the combination I
tried, although that shouldn't cause any problem in principle.

I am starting to think that this particular motherboard audio codec is
either buggy, or not well supported by ALSA as I also have issues with
the HW mixer... things are swapped around, and there is no
"ac97_quirk" module parameter for remapping things that works.

>
> > The midi port worked for some random amount of time untill it
> > completely locked my box.
>
> This were problems with the RTC used for MIDI playback timing
> (not related to any particular driver).
I see.

> Please try the latest ALSA drivers.
Latest as in latest released or CVS-checkout?
The latest kernel/ALSA drivers I tried this on was 2.6.18(-rt
something) and I had the same problems. I am currently using 2.6.17-10

Cheers,

-gzed
Received on Mon Nov 13 16:15:02 2006