Configuring your sound blaster 16 in FreeBSD 4.0


One of the most common problems newcomers to FreeBSD find is getting sound to work, as drivers need to be compiled into the kernel to get it working and there is no easy to use tool to do this.

I have written a short guide for people who own the most common type of sound card, The Sound Blaster 16 and compatible (MOST sound cards are)

1.) Preparing the kernel.

First steps are to compile the drivers into the kernel.  This guide assumes that you have not recompiled your kernel before, of course if you have you need to place
GENERIC with the name of your kernel.

a) Login as root, or su, and add the following lines to
you kernel.

# SB16 Support

device sbc0 at isa? port 0x220 irq 5 drq 1 flags 0x15
device pcm

b) Configure the new kernel with /usr/sbin/config GENERIC

c) change to the compile directory with cd ../../compile/GENERIC

d) compile the kernel with:

make depend
make
make install

e) now reboot your computer :)

2.) Finish of system support

a) First of all, watch the messages as your computer boots up.

b) enter the /dev directory as root, and run:

./MAKEDEV snd0

This should link all the correct files, such as /dev/dsp -> /dev/dsp0

c) Tune your mixer settings, as most people have found the mixer volume to be to low. Two settings you can try tweaking are:

mixer vol +100
mixer pcm +100
mixer bass +100
mixer treble +100

Replace the +100 with other values, such as +80 to fine tune :)

that is it! Hopefully you will now how sound support with your system and have the ability to play MP3's, Audio files and any other sound your system needs to play.

If you've had any unexpected problems, please feel free to query it on #freebsdhelp with me :)

-- sparc v5.7.00
 

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