Bob Tracy wrote:
Supposedly with the ES1888, dma1 is for capture, dma2 is for playback. dma2 == 5 is a 16-bit channel, yes? That could explain much...
As for the values "chosen" for dma1 and dma2, they are the ones that
keep showing up in the Alpha sound "howto" postings/documents.
Running 'show config' in SRM on my Alphas (PWS500au and XP1000) reveals
the settings (except possibly for mpu_port) for the ESS1888 sound chip.
I recall that they are as reported in Alpha sound howtos.
I hadn't been using the ESS1888 for awhile, but have just tried it out
since you reported problems. I am running kernel 2.6.24.3 and Debian
testing on the XP1000. I tried playing a number of wav files with
alsa's aplay, sox's play and with mocp. I found that aplay and mocp
worked reliably through the ESS1888. Sox's play on some files did play
back a small extra segment of the file - particularly on short files and
usually some section near the end of the file - once it had completed
playing the file once; maybe this is what you are also observing.
More onerously, my testing eventually ended in a complete system lock up!
I ran play (or was it aplay - sorry can't remember now)
and the system locked up. Got a response with ping across the network but
couldn't log in via ssh. Have been playing mplayer through the ESS1888
for the last couple of days (don't like it though - the sound quality of
the ESS1888 is not good enough for my ears) and haven't had another one
of those lockups since.