Dan,

A bug was introduced into the maestro3 driver somewhere along the path
of RedHat kernel upgrades --- I'm not sure which was the last good
version. I encountered your exact problem with my C600 and RH7.3
after upgrading to the 2.4.18-17.7.x kernel. Since I hadn't done a
fresh install, I knew immediately that the upgrade introduce the bug.
I then upgraded to RH8.0, hoping it had been patched, but to no avail.

The fix requires re-compiling the kernel after applying a patch to the
driver (below) that I found somewhere on redhat.com (I've since lost
the link). You probably only need to re-compile the sound module ---
but since I had never compiled my own kernel, I thought this was a
good opportunity to give it a try. The patch worked like a charm for
me with the 2.4.18-17.8.0 kernel.

Here's a patch....the syntactical blunder is obvious:

--------- begin --------------------------------
diff -uNr linux-orig/drivers/sound/maestro3.c
linux/drivers/sound/maestro3.c
--- linux-orig/drivers/sound/maestro3.c Fri Oct 25 19:21:57 2002
+++ linux/drivers/sound/maestro3.c Fri Oct 25 19:21:01 2002
@@ -2473,7 +2473,7 @@
if(!external_amp)
return;

- if (0 <= gpio_pin <= 15) {
+ if (0 <= gpio_pin && gpio_pin <= 15) {
polarity_port = 0x1000 + (0x100 * gpio_pin);
} else {
switch (card->card_type) {
--------- end ----------------------------------


...Dan


--- In linux-dell-laptops@y..., "danielsanderson"
<danielsanderson@y...> wrote:
> Of *course* I think to try something just after I send the email and I
> make some progress.
>
> Shortly after I installed RH8.0 from ISOs, the updater wanted to
> update the kernel from 2.4.18-14 to 2.4.18-17.8.0. I let it. It
> nicely left two entries in grub.conf, one for the old kernel and one
> for the new. Switching back to the old kernel restored sound.
>
> I truly thought (or hoped) that an automated kernel upgrade would keep
> the settings and kernel configuration, especially considering that I
> never built a custom kernel; 2.4.18-14 was what it started with, and
> sound worked fine. So I'm left with more interesting questions: How
> can I tell what's different between the two kernels, so I can possibly
> re-configure and build a custom kernel with the latest version that
> keeps everything working? I'm not necessarily in dire need of
> 2.4.18-17.8.0 (though I don't know what's new), but I'm worried that
> future kernel upgrades might disable sound again.
>
> Dave, many thanks for your response. I'm using Bluecurve (which I
> hear is both Gnome and KDE, though I don't fully understand what that
> means). It uses esd for sound. In addition to sound not working, I
> was having an intermittant problem with esd jumping to 100% CPU and
> holding up the computer when I tried to log out; I could open a
> terminal window still, so that'd allow me to kill esd and finish the
> log out. Time will tell if I'll continue to have that problem with
> this "old" kernel.
>
> Many thanks for your help, all!
>
> -- Dan
>
>
>
> --- In linux-dell-laptops@y..., Dave Inskeep <dinskeep@y...> wrote:
> > What desktop are you using, Kde or Gnome? I had some problems with
> artsd frome Kde
> > fighting with XMMS - I solved that problem by installing the artsd
> plugin for XMMS.
> > Perhaps two processes are fighting for use of the sound card?
> >
> > You can see what's using it with "fuser" - type "fuser /dev/dsp"
> before playing the
> > sound and after. It's not a fix, but might point to something useful.
> >
> > Dave
> >
> > --- danielsanderson <danielsanderson@y...> wrote:
> > > Hi all -
> > >
> > > I have a RedHat 8.0 install on an Inspiron 8000, with an ESS Maestro
> > > sound card. When a process (like play/sox, the sound card
set-up Test
> > > button) tries to play a sound, the process consumes 100% CPU and
never
> > > returns. The strange thing is that the sound test worked great
during
> > > the installation. I haven't done any major configuration
changes, but
> > > I wonder if maybe I kicked something.
> > >
> > > My Bluecurve user preferences for Sound have "Enable sound server
> > > startup" checked. (I have this problem whether it is checked or
not.)
> > > This happens inside the APR and out. What else can I check?
> > >
> > > Thanks for any assistance you can provide!
> > > -- Dan
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
> > http://launch.yahoo.com/u2