[ydl-gen] Sound on G4 PowerMac (digital audio)

[Derick Centeno]

On Wed, 30 Jun 2010 07:35:19 -0600
Thomas Carlson <tcarlson at sharedcup.com> wrote:

> Derick:
> 
> I did what you suggested:  changed my window manager to xfce (very
> nice, I'm keeping it) and went to Settings/Settings Manager/Sound.
> All the controls are at 0 which tells me that the default setting is
> not recognizing the sound card.  In the Volume Control utility I
> can't get it to go from headphone to PC speaker.  I had the same
> problem with a Debian installation a while back.  Maybe PowerMac G4
> (Digital Audio) is an oddball among the other PM G4s.
> 
> Thanks for the response, though.
> 
> Tom

Try this Tom:

From anywhere within the xfce desktop right-click and then select
Settings --> Mixer Settings.  This dialog, simply called sound, is more
specific in controlling the hardware; on my system there are two
options default and something called PowerMac Snapper.  PowerMac
Snapper works for me, if you've a different card it should show up
there.

Also within XFCE choose Other --> Soundcard Detection.  A dialog box
appears asking for your root password, enter it.  Now a dialog box
appears called Audio configuration which allows you to control directly
which sound card produces sound and provides a test for you to hear it.
There are three tabs:

Sound test, Settings and System.

The first is self-explanatory.  Settings allows you to configure the
card.  System identifies what exactly your system is running.
The sound log file on my system is over 1,000 lines long and wouldn't
be useful to you.  What is useful to you is to acquire the ALSA driver
and sound utilities which maybe is missing on your system.  The System
tab will show you what you have or don't.  IF it is missing or not
available you can then use yum as follows:

to find out where it is do:

# yum info "*alsa*"
Loading "protectbase" plugin
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Excluding Packages from Livna for Fedora Core 6 - ppc - Base
Finished
Excluding Packages from Fedora Extras
Finished
121 packages excluded due to repository protections
Installed Packages
Name   : alsa-lib
Arch   : ppc
Version: 1.0.17
Release: 1
Size   : 1.3 M
Repo   : installed
Summary: The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) library.

Description:
The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) provides audio and MIDI
functionality to the Linux operating system.

This package includes the ALSA runtime libraries to simplify application
programming and provide higher level functionality as well as support for
the older OSS API, providing binary compatibility for most OSS programs.


Name   : alsa-lib-devel
Arch   : ppc
Version: 1.0.17
Release: 1
Size   : 9.6 M
Repo   : installed
Summary: Static libraries and header files from the ALSA library.

Description:
The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) provides audio and MIDI
functionality to the Linux operating system.

This package includes the ALSA development libraries for developing
against the ALSA libraries and interfaces.


Name   : alsa-oss
Arch   : ppc
Version: 1.0.12
Release: 3.fc6
Size   : 88 k
Repo   : installed
Summary: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) wrapper for OSS

Description:
This package contains the compatibility library and wrapper script for
running legacy OSS applications through ALSA. Unlike the kernel
driver, this has the advantage of supporting DMIX software mixing.


Name   : alsa-oss-devel
Arch   : ppc
Version: 1.0.12
Release: 3.fc6
Size   : 11 k
Repo   : installed
Summary: Headers for ALSA wrapper for OSS

Description:
Header files for alsa-oss.


Name   : alsa-utils
Arch   : ppc
Version: 1.0.17
Release: 1
Size   : 1.6 M
Repo   : installed
Summary: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) utilities

Description:
This package contains command line utilities for the Advanced Linux Sound
Architecture (ALSA).


Name   : alsamixergui
Arch   : ppc
Version: 0.9.0
Release: 0.3.rc1.fc6
Size   : 78 k
Repo   : installed
Summary: GUI mixer for ALSA sound devices

Description:
alsamixergui is a FLTK based frontend for alsamixer. It is written
directly on top of the alsamixer source, leaving the original source
intact, only adding a couple of ifdefs, and some calls to the gui
part, so it provides exactly the same functionality, but with a
graphical userinterface.


Available Packages
Name   : balsa
Arch   : ppc
Version: 2.3.20
Release: 1.fc6
Size   : 2.5 M
Repo   : fedora-extras
Summary: Mail Client
Description:
Balsa is a GNOME email client which supports mbox, maildir, and mh
local mailboxes, and IMAP4 and POP3 remote mailboxes. Email can be
sent via sendmail or SMTP. Optional multithreading support allows for
non-intrusive retrieval and sending of mail. A finished GUI similar to
that of the Eudora email client supports viewing images inline, saving
message parts, viewing headers, adding attachments, moving messages,
and printing messages.

Name   : kadu-alsa_sound
Arch   : ppc
Version: 0.5.0
Release: 2.fc6
Size   : 19 k
Repo   : fedora-extras
Summary: ALSA module for Kadu
Description:
ALSA module for Kadu.

Name   : openpbx-alsa
Arch   : ppc
Version: 1.2
Release: 3.rc2.svn2282.fc6
Size   : 56 k
Repo   : fedora-extras
Summary: ALSA channel driver for OpenPBX
Description:
This package contains an ALSA console driver for OpenPBX, which allows
the local sound devices to be used for making and receiving calls.

Name   : python-alsaaudio
Arch   : ppc
Version: 0.2
Release: 1.fc6
Size   : 17 k
Repo   : fedora-extras
Summary: Python Alsa Bindings
Description:
The Python-AlsaAudio package contains bindings for the ALSA sound API.

# 

You can see from what yum produces what I have installed; you can
choose to have installed the packages which I have, or all the alsa
packages available.  Of course your version of yum can only see or
acquire them if it is pointing to the servers where they can be found.
If you've questions regarding how I set up yum, please ask.  I'll
happily share where I picked up the strategy of using yum more
effectively both to expand YDL and further protect the base
installation.

Assuming you have access to the alsa libraries all you need then do is
have yum install them for you.  Of course, you'll recognize * as a
terminal wild-card symbol which I used in the yum command sequence to
avoid typing characters, numbers and so on which developers keep
insisting in putting into packages and library names. :)

I hope the above was helpful.

All the best...