Specifications

Information on how to use the mwave sound card on an IBM ThinkPad laptop computer can be found in the
file /usr/src/linux/Documentation/sound/mwave, which is part of the kernel source
distribution (note that not all IBM ThinkPads use the MWAVE sound chip).
6.34. Applications fail because my sound card has no mixer
Some old 8−bit SoundBlaster cards have no mixer circuitry. Some sound applications insist on being able to
open the mixer device, and fail with these cards. Jens Werner ([e-mail]−bs.de) reports a
workaround for this is to link /dev/mixer to /dev/null and everything should work fine.
6.35. Problems with a SB16 CT4170
From Scott Manley ([e-mail]):
There seems to be a new type of Soundblaster − it was sold to us as a SB16 − the Model no. on the Card is
CT4170. These Beasties only have one DMA channel so when you try to set them up then the kernel will
have trouble accessing the 16 bit DMA. The solution is to set the second DMA to 1 so that the card will
behave as advertised.
6.36. How to connect a MIDI keyboard to a soundcard
From Kim G. S. OEyhus ([e-mail]):
I looked all around the internet and in sound documentation on how to do something as simple as connecting
the MIDI output from a master keyboard to the MIDI input on a sound card. I found nothing. The problem is
that they both use the same device, /dev/midi, at least when using the OSS sound system. So I found a way to
do it, which I want to share. This makes for a very simple synthesizer, with full MIDI support:
CONNECTING A MIDI MASTER−KEYBOARD DIRECTLY TO A SOUNDCARD WITH MIDI
A MIDI master−keyboard is a keyboard without any synthesizer, and with only a MIDI−out plug. This can be
connected to the 15−pin D−SUB port on most sound−cards with a suitable cable.
Such a keyboard can be used to control the MIDI synthesizer device for the card, thus making a simple
keyboard controlled synthesizer.
Compile the following program, say with 'gcc −o prog prog.c' and run it:
#include <fcntl.h>
main()
{
int fil, a;
char b[256];
fil=open("/dev/midi", O_RDWR);
for(;;)
The Linux Sound HOWTO
6.34. Applications fail because my sound card has no mixer 27