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Multiple sound cards in eCS / OS/2?

Started by Fahrvenugen, 2009.02.17, 06:57:49

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Fahrvenugen

Hi,

I'm in the middle of a project where I'm trying to reduce the number of computers that I'm using at one of the locations I manage, and I'm trying to figure out if I can add one more task to one of the OS/2 machines I have running there and then be able to reallocate one of the machines I have doing almost nothing.

What I need to do is to either 1) Do 2 different things with the audio coming into the Line In on the sound card, or
2) Use 2 different sound cards in a single machine under Warp or eCS.

What I currently have is 2 computers set up  both doing similar things.  One is running Warp 4.5 and is acting as an audio logger - all of the audio coming into the Line In on the sound card gets dumped to an MP3 file, and every hour it creates a new file.  This is done via a simple REXX script that pipes the output from DRECORD to LAME, using a command such as:

drecord CON | lame -r -x - mp3file.mp3

The other machine is running Windows 2003, and is streaming the same audio via its Line In using WinAmp to a Shoutcast server.

What I want to try is putting the Shoutcast stream on to the Warp box.

I already have a copy of Icecast running on another Warp machine that I'd stream to.  And I've found that I can create the stream and stream it to the icecast server (in the example located below on 192.168.0.20) with something like:

drecord CON | lame -b 128 -r -x - | shout 192.168.0.20 -a -x -P Password

Or using playrec:

playrec con /r | lame -b 128 -r - | shout 192.168.0.20 -a -x -P Password

Since it is the same audio going to both, I'd like to be able to just grab the audio from the same sound card and dump it to both shout and to the mp3 file, but this doesn't work.  Even if I use the /S switch in drecord (which claims it allows for shared use of the same sound card), I'm  finding as soon as I start up another application to pull the audio, it'll stop grabbing audio on whichever I start first.

The second thought I had was just to plug 2 sound cards into the machine and feed the same audio into Line IN on each one.  But I've had trouble getting 2 sound cards to work.  If I use the Uniaudio drivers it seems to either trap on me upon boot, or if I use an older version of Uniaudio it just won't see both cards (only sees the first), even though both will work individually under Uniaudio.

I've also tried with a Soundblaster Live card with the SBLIVE drivers and had the same result/

Does anyone know if  it is possible to get Warp to run with 2 audio cards?  I know in theory it is possible, however this is the first time I've ever tried.

Also, since app that I'm using audio with dumps the audio through stdout and stdin at some point, even though they are started up in different sessions, does anyone know if this is likely to cause a problem? 

Or am I just trying to make things too difficult for me, should I just give up and keep running more machines then I really need?

I should mention (for those who think of it), I think that my Warp machine should have little difficulty generating both MP3 streams (one going to hard disk, the other going to an Icecast server).  Currently just to dump the MP3 to hard disk it only uses between 10 - 20%  of the CPU, so I believe it should be able to handle doing both.  But I could find out differently if I ever get it to work.

Thanks

cyber

Warp can have multiple soundcards, I've have this earlier, and kinda right now; mu TV tuner card has "TV" and 'Audio multimedia' as two devices. Most important for me while installing was assign IRQ's and DMA chanels, to not use shared ones.  So as first step, could You check Your DMA's and IRQ's settings ?

Fahrvenugen

When I tried 2 cards they were on different IRQ's and DMA's, but I still ran into difficulties upon boot.

I'm wondering if maybe part of the difficulty is within the mmpm.ini file.  It looks correct, but that file can also be somewhat cryptic to get it to work properly when something is messed up.

I also tried loading the Uniaudio drivers 2 times (the way you'd have to do if you had 2 NICs in a system and wanted to load them both up, have all the drivers loading) but this didn't work either.  With one version of Uniaud it just trapped, another gave the "can't load due to not enough memory" error (or however it is phrased, I can't recall exactly), and the third build of the driver I tried it just identified the same card 2 times.

I may actually set up a test machine and remove  and reinstall all the MMPM and Uniaudio stuff with 2 cards installed and see if I can make it work that way.

Thanks again!

cyber

Wich kind of difficulties ? It may be that one of the card has assign DMA that cann't use or similar ?

I was in little different position, as I was runing SB Vibra 16 and one of ESS cards in one machine. Vibra is pure PNP, and ESS was with jumpers for settings. Because that, I wasn't try Uniaud, I was have native drivers for both cards. Once I set up hardware (I was have problems with DMA, and also lot of problems with memory ranges Vibra use, because has several devices built-in, like FM tuner, MIDI, IDE controler, joystick controler, etc. I was now remember that I was must dissable some of this "devices" to got all working and no memory address conflicts). Software instalation of drivers was simple. With Uniaud, did You try to set paramethars manualy in command line ? Also, could You try combination of Uniaud and different drivers (SBlive native?) ?

rudi

Quote from: cyber on 2009.02.18, 08:44:44
With Uniaud, did You try to set paramethars manualy in command line ?

None of these newer drivers (UNIAUD, SBLive, C-Media) are designed th handle
multiple cards. Also it is not possible to load more than one instance.


Quote from: cyber on 2009.02.18, 08:44:44
Also, could You try combination of Uniaud and different drivers (SBlive native?) ?

That should work.


RobertM

In addition to rudi's points, if you do have an sblive card (ie: sblive081 driver compatible), the use of the native driver ensures multiple wav streams are available. Unlike some of the few other cards that I have tried that support multiple streams, the sblive081 driver also allows such when certain subsystems such as REXX are accessing the sound card (ie: you can have multiple REXX apps playing audio - which never worked for me on the other multi-wav-stream cards I have tried).

-Robert


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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Ben

Quote from: RobertM on 2009.02.27, 22:44:58
In addition to rudi's points, if you do have an sblive card (ie: sblive081 driver compatible), the use of the native driver ensures multiple wav streams are available. Unlike some of the few other cards that I have tried that support multiple streams, the sblive081 driver also allows such when certain subsystems such as REXX are accessing the sound card (ie: you can have multiple REXX apps playing audio - which never worked for me on the other multi-wav-stream cards I have tried).

-Robert

Greetings.

I really like Sander's SBLive drivers, however, I've have never been able to get them to work on a multi-core processor. 8(

Has anyone had any better luck with that?

RobertM

Quote from: Ben on 2009.02.28, 00:49:55

Greetings.

I really like Sander's SBLive drivers, however, I've have never been able to get them to work on a multi-core processor. 8(

Has anyone had any better luck with that?


Though I have yet to try them on a multi-core processor, I have had problems getting them to work if the sound card's IRQ is shared with anything else. Dunno if that is related...

I have had them working on a dual CPU Pentium Pro "back in the day"


-R


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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osw

Quote from: Ben on 2009.02.28, 00:49:55
Quote from: RobertM on 2009.02.27, 22:44:58
In addition to rudi's points, if you do have an sblive card (ie: sblive081 driver compatible), the use of the native driver ensures multiple wav streams are available. Unlike some of the few other cards that I have tried that support multiple streams, the sblive081 driver also allows such when certain subsystems such as REXX are accessing the sound card (ie: you can have multiple REXX apps playing audio - which never worked for me on the other multi-wav-stream cards I have tried).

-Robert

Greetings.

I really like Sander's SBLive drivers, however, I've have never been able to get them to work on a multi-core processor. 8(

Has anyone had any better luck with that?


Hi!
Try beta 0.82 driver, the one shipped with ecs2 - it's smp ready - and working here for me, on smp kernel with acpi.

cheers

Ben

Greetings again.

I gave it a try, but same problem as before; Noise comes out of it, but little else. 8(

I couldn't notice any difference.

Oh, well.

Thanks for the tip though.

One thing that is encouraging and that's the knowledge that someone is working on that driver again!  :D



RobertM

Quote from: Ben on 2009.03.01, 04:06:08
Greetings again.

I gave it a try, but same problem as before; Noise comes out of it, but little else. 8(


The noise is the exact issue I was getting with resource conflicts unresolved (first I'd just get the card to initialize and make it's "pop" when it did so - then with some more playing, I'd just get noise for each sound). Absolutely no resource sharing with that card seemed to work for me.


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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Fahrvenugen

Thanks for everyone's help and suggestions.

To be honest, I have not had a chance to try any of them.  I'm in the process of moving, so at the moment things are hectic for me (aside from the fact that my test machine is packed right now).

Once I get my office set up again I'll give some of the suggestions a try and let everyone know what I've found.

Thanks again!