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

[Jeremy Gregorio]

John Gruenenfelder wrote:

>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.
>
>
>  
>
Cool, thanks for the info. I'll try the sourceforge build when I get the 
card. I hope it works out, everything I've heard about the card is good, 
it's a pity there isn't better linux support.

Jeremy Gregorio