Yamaha opl3sa2 sound card configuration through alsaconf on Debian Lenny.

I have mentioned about my old desktop Intel Pentium 200 Mhz MMX 32 MB RAM many times on this blog. This PC has a legacy ISA sound card Yamaha opl3sa2. Puppy Linux has the utility alsaconf which detects and configures this card correctly. I have 256 MB swap partition and Puppy Linux uses it, therefore, it is possible to take out the Puppy Linux CD and play an audio CD.

I have recently installed Debian Lenny on this desktop and wanted to configure the sound card. I installed alsa-utils package which contains alsaconf. Following are the steps:
$ su
Enter root password
# apt-get install alsa-utils

After installations I got alsaconf in Debian menu. I clicked on it and had to enter the root password once again.

The first screen read:
No supported PnP or PCI card found. Would you like to probe legacy ISA cards/chips
yes

Next screen:
Probing legacy ISA cards might make your system unstable. Are you sure to proceed.
yes

Next screen:
Probing legacy ISA cards. Please select the drivers to probe.
[*] opl3sa2 Yamaha OPL3SA2+

I deselected other drivers.

Next screen:
Shall I try all possible DMA and IRQ combinations? With this option, some unconventional configurations might be found, but it will take much longer time.
yes

Next screen:
Configuring opl3sa2. Do you want to modify /etc/modprobe.conf
yes

Next screen:
OK. Sound driver configured. ALSA mixer used to raise volume. You can change the volume later.
ok

Next screen:
The mixer is set up now for playing. Shall I try to play sound sample now?
yes

After sound card configuration I downloaded the command line CD player cdcd (it was dcd on earlier versions of Debian).

# apt-get install cdcd

Now I am happily playing an audio CD and surfing through Kazehakase (or elinks) on Debian Lenny IceWM desktop on 32 MB RAM.

Debian Lenny rocks on 32 MB RAM.

Recently I downloaded the 150 MB netinst CD image of Debian Lenny Beta2 from this page.

Initially I installed it on my COMPAQ Presario 2500 series Laptop. After installing the base system I added xorg, IceWM and slim since I wanted very lightweight system. I found really a very light Debian.

Inspired by the lightness I decided to try it on my old desktop Pentium MMX 200 Mhz 32 MB RAM.

The installer went into Low Memory mode and loaded minimum installer components and asked to add additional components I wanted. I did not add anything. This resulted into failure of Network Card Detection. I bypassed the Network Configuration. The installer contacts NTP server after Network configuration. When it could not contact NTP server it simply asked whether hardware clock was set to UTC or not and proceeded to install the base system. The installer automatically selected the 486 Kernel image. At select and install software stage (after Base Install) I unchecked every thing and the base installation was finished.

After booting I configured the network by editing /etc/network/interfaces file and started the network. I updated and upgraded the system through apt-get (including Kernel 2.6.24 to 2.6.25) and could reboot into the new Kernel.

I added xorg and icewm and edited xorg.conf to configure the serial mouse, added Modeline, PreferredMode in Monitor Section, Default depth, depth and Mode to use in screen section. I made .xnitrc to boot into IceWM and used startx to get into IceWM.

The result on IceWM:
$ free -m
Total used free
Mem: 28 26 2
-/+ buffers/cache11 17
Swap 243 1 243

$ ps aux | wc -l
31

I have reduced the tty terminal processes by commenting getty lines in /etc/inittab file.

I added Kazehakase web browser. It gives performance similar to Firefox 1.5 on old DSL.

Using Damn Small Linux on Pentium 200 MHZ 32 MB RAM

My 4 years old Laptop was getting heated up and ACPI was shutting it down at 72 degC. I have given it to my friend for opening and cleaning. Now I am forced to use the old Desktop bought in 1998. The specifications are Pentium I MMX 200 MHZ 32 MB RAM. I am using Damn Small Linux from live CD and Firefox Browser. I have to wait after clicking on Firefox icon, then I have to wait for loading of the web page. Once loaded, I can work quickly, like I am typing this on blogger.com at normal speed.

I have Broadband connection but web page loads slowly because of memory limitation on this PC. I am trying to enjoy the slowness, particularly, the gmail and other Google Applications which have become necessary part of my online life.

Running Linux on Pentium MMX 200 MHz, 32 MB RAM

Hi,

I have an old desktop with Pentium MMX 200 MHz 32 MB RAM. It has Windows 98 since it was bought. Ubuntu is my favorite distribution so I installed it first in dual boot with JWM window manager. Here is my post describing Ubuntu installation on this machine.

Later on I tried Damn Small Linux and did a frugal install. I added Opera from mydsl and found that it was faster compared to Opera on Ubuntu with JWM.

Then I fiddled with the sound card and found that it was Yamaha OPL3-SAx. I searched on many Linux forums including Ubuntuforums and learnt that I required alsaconf to configure it. I remembered that Puppy Linux Live CD had this utility.

I inserted Puppy Live CD and could configure the sound card without inputting any DMA or IRQ numbers by using alsaconf. I could test the sound through alsaconf at the end of the configuration.

Then I decided to play an audio CD and discovered that I could remove Puppy Live CD (although I had only 32 MB RAM) and insert and play the audio CD in the same drive. Amazing!

I also configured my network connection and saved all configurations on the hard disc at the end of the session.

Now whenever I insert Puppy Live CD the saved sound card and network configurations work. There is no need to do hard disc install.

I am looking for suitable Opera version for Puppy like I have in mydsl.