[Tfug] Anyone know how well the Diamond Monster 300 works under linux?

[John Gruenenfelder]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 12:34:54PM -0700, Jeremy Gregorio wrote:
>	It uses an AU8830 chip. I've generally heard good things off the 
>	card and I got one off ebay for all of $1.85. The linux hardware database's 
>rating of it's not bad, then again I can't find too much on google about 
>the card as it relates to linux, and it's not listed in Redhat's 
>hardware compatibilty list (and I couldn't find a module for it in 
>/usr/src/linux/drivers/sound, but it's no big deal if I have to set up 
>the driver myself). Anyone have one of these? Thanks in advance :).
>
>Jeremy Gregorio

Yup, I have one.  I'm not using it now, though, as my mobo has built in sound
(2 channel only).  There *are* drivers for Linux.  i386 only and mostly just a
binary file with some bit of source.  Aureal had promised to release fully
open drivers, but then they went belly up.

Experience with the drivers seems to vary quite a bit.  On my machine, the
card worked quite well in Windoze, but poorly in Linux.  It would give me
sound for about 5 minutes, then simply die.  No kernel crashes, but the sound
would not return without a reboot (unloading/loading the modules didn't
help).  Of course, this was on my old BP6 motherboard.  Others seem to be
quite happy with it.

There is a SourceForge project for working on the drivers.  Some people there
are working on reverse engineering the binary module.  I don't recall the
project name offhand, but you can Google for it.

The other crappy thing is that when Creative bought Aureal's assets, they got
all of this stuff, but the greedy bastards refuse to release the specs for the
Aureal chips that they now own.

So... for two bucks, you really can't go wrong.  :)  The sound quality really
is great.  The card is only now matched by Creative's Audigy.  Just took them
about 2-3 years to catch up.


-- 
--John Gruenenfelder    Research Assistant, Steward Observatory, U of Arizona
                        johng@as.arizona.edu
Try Weasel Reader for PalmOS  --  http://gutenpalm.sf.net
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood
of my enemies!"
        --Sam of Sam & Max