[ltp] Serial/PCMCIA problems with TP600E

Thomas Hood linux-thinkpad@www.bm-soft.com
Sun, 25 Feb 2001 16:57:33 +0000 (GMT)


--- Tom Grydeland <Tom.Grydeland@phys.uit.no> wrote: 
> > Can you do this even if the second interrupt is not used?
> 
> Yes!  Imagine that.
> 
> (I replaced "mpuirq=7" with "mpuirq=0" in the conf.modules line, now the
> second IRQ is not taken up, and playing MIDI files with "playmidi" still
> works.  Amazing)
> 
> > Are you using an external MIDI device?
> 
> Nope.  I don't have any such toys that I am aware of.  This would be
> things like a synthesizer keyboard, right?

Yes.

You have confirmed my hypothesis that the so-called
"MIDI" interrupt is in fact only an interrupt line for
the MIDI UART, i.e., for the external MIDI interface.
Thus you only need a second interrupt if you are playing
MIDI files to external synthesizers or if you have a
keyboard or whatever connected to the ThinkPad.  (I know
next to nothing about MIDI, BTW.)  There's no MIDI port on
the laptop itself; it must be on the docking station.

MIDI .mid files can be played on the laptop itself either
by using the Yamaha/AdLib/OPL3 FM synthesizer at
/dev/sequencer or by converting them to digital audio
and using the PCM at /dev/dsp.  Playmidi and kmid do the
former; timidity and kmidi do the latter.

This is true with the OSS drivers, anyway.  The ALSA
drivers use different device file names, and currently
the ALSA drivers do not support the CS4237B FM synthesizer.
When I run playmidi I get "open /dev/sequencer: No such device".

(The lack of FM synthesizer support is a puzzle to me.
Look at the list of modules that are loaded when I 
start up ALSA cs4236 sound:
snd-pcm-plugin         16208   0  (unused)
snd-seq-midi            3664   0  (unused)
snd-seq-oss            29888   0  (unused)
snd-seq-midi-event      3360   0  [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-oss]
snd-seq                42592   0  [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event]
snd-card-cs4236         5616   2 
snd-cs4236             20944   0  [snd-card-cs4236]
snd-mpu401-uart         2688   0  [snd-card-cs4236]
snd-rawmidi            10240   0  [snd-seq-midi snd-mpu401-uart]
snd-seq-device          4272   0  [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-oss snd-seq
snd-rawmidi]
snd-cs4231             19520   0  [snd-card-cs4236 snd-cs4236]
snd-mixer              24272   1  [snd-cs4236 snd-cs4231]
snd-pcm                32160   0  [snd-pcm-plugin snd-cs4231]
snd-opl3                5040   0  [snd-card-cs4236]
snd-timer               8640   0  [snd-seq snd-cs4231 snd-pcm snd-opl3]
snd-hwdep               3536   0  [snd-opl3]
snd                    37424   6  [pcmcia_core snd-pcm-plugin ... ]
soundcore               3952   3  [snd]

That a shipload of modules, and some of them look like they
should be FM synthesizer drivers.  But, the synth just doesn't
work.)

Thomas




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