Amithlon / AHI Sound Configuration Guide?

[dr.zeissler]

Seems to me that it should work on Kernel310 and drivers 090.

[SnkBitten]

I just fired up my VirtualBox Amithlon and checked it's sound.

I did a pciinsmod and saw that ac97/snd-ac97-codec.o was being loaded along with snd-intel8x0.o and a few others.....but using ac97 sound.

I had to set AHI to use Unit 0: and not Amithlon-1: sound settings. Also if I set it to 8000Hz in AHI I should be setting it to 8000 in Baer to match.

Scroll down in AHI to see if Unit0: choices are available and if they work.

[dr.zeissler]

Thx, I did it exactly the same as on another machine..and there it works 100%. It 's not needed to match bear and AHI on 8000hz, UNIT 0 is also not needed, Amithlon-1 is correct, if I install the drivers for another kernel and do not use the supported SB128 or VIAAC97. Unit0 was never an entry in the choosable soundcards. If I am not using emubox or emubox new it's always Amithlon-1 or Filesave...nothing else. You can in fact choose Unit 0 so that Filesave is not a vaild entry and only Amithlon-1 stays in these three options (mono, stereo, stereo++") but that is not what you meant and that does not work too... if there is a problem between bear and ahi/amithlon soundcard, bear is not loading and braking up/closing with an error...but it's abvious that bear is finding everything and everything seems to be correct...so the only possibly error could be the AC97mixer...everything else makes no sense to me.

Thx!

[dr.zeissler]

I did some further testing. SNKBitten you are right that "bear" needs to be matching ahi settings on the freq. to get a clear sound. so 8.000 on both or more...I have chosen 48000 on both. That made the sound clear on an already working machine (FSC-S2) with kernel310 and AC97.

I can't figure out why the target machine it's still silent on AC97. Perhaps an issue with irq...I have more machines to check that. I will install the "B"-machine which is exactly the same but without any cards, so no g550-agp, no 1940scsi-pci and no catweaselmk4plus-pci. We will see if I get sound then.

[dr.zeissler]

the "B" machine without any card behaves exactly the same.
Everything seems to be right, but I hear nothing either with "bear" and 68k demos, or in amithlon itself. crazy.

Have to brun a cd to test the AC97mixer.

[dr.zeissler]

AC97mixer reports...no compatible soundcard...more testing required...

[dr.zeissler]

Updated to AHI6 like shown in your description. Now I can choose "unit0" directly as an entry. But "playing sound" still not possible, I hear nothing. I am stuck here.

[dr.zeissler]

@SNKBitten can I sent you one of my FSC-E600 machines to try it out?

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by dr.zeissler

@SNKBitten can I sent you one of my FSC-E600 machines to try it out?

Honestly I really don't have time to work on my own system, which needs to be rebuilt, to also work on someone else's. Plus that's a long way to ship a system (south east USA) that would need to be shipped back.

Check you amithlon init file (small) and try adjusting the ramdisk_size= and leavepages= to sllightly smaller sizes. I've also had to reduce the memory (mem=) by a few to leave enough room for all the device modules to load. I wouldn't get any errors, I just wouldn't have ethernet or something not work until I lowered it, it could have even been the framebuffer from the videocard dropping to VESA and not being accelerated. It's been a while but I remember having to tweak those on one of the i-7 systems I was testing at the time. That was a weird board, it allowed me to use 1.5 GB of physical ram set for triple channel mode.

[dr.zeissler]

Thx, these E600 are old i865 machines, so no need to sent back. Spare time is indeed a problem, I don't want to force you to anything...so no problem... I will make a new attempt and check out your tips.

I already had to take out the 512Stick to lower to 512MB because with 1GB the machine always stuck with two blinking lights on the keyboard. The way the bios allocates the highram (two options are available) is also a problem, if it's set to free ram for expansion-cards like SCSI (what I have) the machine also does not boot. I will also test if it is need to set mem for eg 500 even if 512MB are inserted.

As I said, everything looks correct but AC97 1980 is some kind of muted. If I switch the external speakers to maximum levels I can barely hear that the testsound in amithlon changes the signal...there is no playing at all, but the sweeping sound that is minimal audible is changing if I press the button in AHI to play a testsound.

[dr.zeissler]

Originally Posted by prowler

Hi Dale,

I've found the new web address for the amigabest.com site:
http://amithlon.free.fr/~amigabest/english/frame_en.htm

Edit: Fortunately, there's still quite a lot of useful info under the SUPPORT, COMPATIBILITY, TEST, FAQS and INSTALL tabs.

Any working "archive.org" backup? I can't find a working one with COMPATIBILITY, TEST, FAQS .

Beside that what can I do, if the "linux-side" does mute or route my AC97 wrong.
Any chance to fix that while changing the mixer-settings or switch the codec from 2 to 6 channel?

EDIT:
I installed Debian Sarge 3.1 kernel 2.4 on that E600 and this linux routes the codec sound signal directly to the pc-spk and not to line-out. MSDOS is still a no go, neither SBEMU or DOSSOUND do make any sound-output as well as Amithlon. The Codec AD1980 is supported by the kernel 3.10 driver set (0.90) and in amithlon everything seems OK but the sound that is played in amithlon is routed somewhere and not to any output available. I read lot's of problems with AC97 and linux, mostly they are solved when switching back to 6channel-mode (from 2channel).

I think the only way of fixing it is finding out how to solve it within linux (e.g. debian) and then build a new fixed kernel with patched sound drivers from the kernel 3.10 and it's driverset.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060202...i-HOWTO-6.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20051211...?page=intel8x0
https://web.archive.org/web/20051214...odule=intel8x0

Thx!

[dr.zeissler]

so here is the working fix for SBEMU in order to get sound on AD1980 in dos. It is very likely that this is the fix that is needed to get sound with AD1980 on amithlon too.

thp wrote on 2023-10-24, 19:48:
Update on the AD1980 issue. Was doing some test builds and dr.zeissler tested over the last two weeks with some back-and-forth.
Turns out we were quite close to the real answer to begin with, 3 bits need to be set on the MISC (0x76) register:
0x4000 - AC97NC
0x0400 - HPSEL
0x0020 - LOSEL
Pull request for upstream SBEMU: https://github.com/crazii/SBEMU/pull/35