[ale] Productive weekend!

[Calvin Harrigan]

Charles Shapiro wrote:

> Hey, I'm back after over a year!
>
> At the ALE Install Fest I bravely (or perhaps foolishly) wiped my aged 
> aged Debian 3.0 install and started down the road to a fresh, cool, 
> new gentoo box.
> Got the thing to boot & run with no problem, then spent several full 
> fruitless days trying to get my SoundBlaster Audigy ZS card to work 
> properly. This was doubly frustrating 'cause it was working just fine 
> in the old system. I realized early that I'd have to download and 
> install the full ALSA 1.0.6a sound system, which I did. I wrassled 
> through all of that stuff and got it to the point where alsamixer(1) 
> would talk to it, which usually signifies a successful end of the 
> road. But alas, no matter how I fiddled the mixer settings, the card 
> sounded like KRAP -- like an AM radio set just to the side of the 
> correct channel.
>
> I struggled with it for about 4 hours (plus extensive google 
> searches). Only after re-verifying every diagnostic and software thing 
> I could think of did I try easter-egging the jacks on the back of the 
> card. That's when I found out that the whole problemo was that I had 
> the speakers plugged in to the wrong jack.  Sigh. So, for all you 
> dispairing Linux emu10k1 SB Audigy users out there, make sure you have 
> the speakers plugged in to the 3rd jack from the firewire port, at 
> least if you're using standard POC PC speakers (as opposed to high-end 
> majic digital stereo stuff).   DON'T use the first jack on the right, 
> even though sound is coming out of it!
>
> Given that googling for things like "audigy sound quality" didn't 
> bring this up, I wonder how many cards get returned 'cause folks don't 
> know this?
>
> After the epic sound card wrangle, the rest of the install was pretty 
> anticlimactic. And now I have USB mass storage working, firefox, gaim, 
> et cetera all happily living at home. I'm so excited!
>
> Alas, late last night Speedfactory fell over all over Georgia. Guess 
> we'll hear some kvetching about that here..
>
> -- CHS
> (Charles Shapiro, late of NuBridges and now working for Turner)
>
>
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Welcome to the Gentoo fold.  Some say the darkside...

Calvin...