Posts Tagged ‘beep sound’

How to configure old ISA sound card on Debian / Ubuntu / Xubuntu Linux

Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

isa old soundcard make work on Debian Ubuntu Xubuntu Fedora GNU / Linux
If you happen to install a modern GNU / Linux distribution to a relatively old computer hardware with an ISA non-PNP (Plug and Play) soundcard it will be not visible neither among PCI devices list with (lspci) command nor in USBs list (lsusb). Thus with ISA cards, the way to configure a 16 bit SoundBlaster is via a special kernel modules snd-es18xx and snd-sb16 which thanksfully is still existent even on latest Linux distros. Without this two modules enabled in the kernel trying alsamixer command will be unable to launch the mixer as the soundcard is not detected on run of /etc/init.d/alsa start – ALSA enabling boot script – loaded during the system enters runlevel 2.

For one time test of sound card driver, I tested by running:

manastir-pomorie@manastir-pomorie:~# /sbin/modprobe snd-es18xx
manastir-pomorie@manastir-pomorie:~# /sbin/modprobe snd-sb16
 

On enabling enabling the sound card via above two drivers on the speakers – volume raised to Loud a kind of beep sound was heard, this led me to thoughts now it might work. Before testing the sound in running Youtube Video with sound in Firefox, I launched alsamixer to see if volume settings for SoundBlaster are not muted. Not surprisingly they were set raised to lowest level as you can see on picture:

alsamixer xubuntu configuring isa old sound card on deb based distro

After raising the volume level for PCM and testing in browser thanksfully soundblaster worked fine.
To make the two kernel modules making the ISA card work, I added the modules to /etc/modules

manastir-pomorie@manastir-pomorie:~# echo 'snd-es18xx' >> /etc/modules
manastir-pomorie@manastir-pomorie:~# echo 'snd-sb16' >> /etc/modules

Even after restarting XUbuntu sound drivers gets loaded. Though I tested this on Xubuntu as Xubuntu is Debian based, same kernel module should be working fine on Ubuntu and Debian. The exact Xubuntu version and kernel on which the ISA card worked is;

manastir-pomorie@manastir-pomorie:~$ cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS \n \l

manastir-pomorie@manastir-pomorie:~$ uname -a;
Linux manastir-pomorie 3.2.0-38-generic #61-Ubuntu SMP Tue Feb 19 12:20:02 UTC 2013 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

How to disable PC Speaker on FreeBSD / Mute PC-Speaker on BSD kernels

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012

 

old school personal computer pc speaker / freebsd disable Pc-Speaker picture

After finding out How PC Speaker is muted on Linux , I've decided to also disable the annoying beeps on BSD. This is in tandem with the minimalistic philosophy I try to apply to every server I manage.

Also on BSD Desktop machines it is quite annoying especially if csh (C Shell) is used, everytime you press TAB you get the beep sound. On BSD beep sound produced on tab completion is louder than in Linux and that makes it even more annoying …

Disabling pc-speaker beeps on BSDs is done via a sysctl kernel variable:

freebsd# sysctl hw.syscons.bell=0
hw.syscons.bell: 0 -> 0

To further permanently disable on system boot add hw.syscons.bell=0 to /etc/sysctl.conf, e.g.:

freebsd# echo 'hw.syscons.bell=0' >> /etc/sysctl.conf

 

Well that's it no more mind drilling beeps :)