The blog of r4ndom rantings

Wireless with Broadcom bcm4313 on a HP6450b with Fedora 15

r4ndom — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:38:28 +0000

Tried everything to get wireless on my HP6450b…. got it working after some tweaking.
Follow guides ”out there”. If none of them work, try this:

#lspci -vnnn

See if bcma is listed as kernel driver.
If it is. Add ”bcma” and ”bcma-pci-bridge” to your /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and reboot.

Should do it!

Alix – beyond courage

r4ndom — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 10:21:06 +0000

Alix l'intrepede

Har du missat Alix? Legendarisk ”Ligne claire” tecknad serie om den unga gallen Alix och hans följeslagare Enak. Superschysst detaljrikedom och ”historiskt korrekt” serie som utspelar sig i Rom då Julius Caesar styrde.

Någon sjuk lag från tidigt 1900-tal stipulerade att seriefigurer inte fick ha en ”partner” så Alix ignorerar alla snyggingar oavsett om de är från Grekland, Rom eller Fenicien. Spekulationen att Enak och Alix är ett par finns också. Det blir lätt så att man tycker Alix anstränger sig lite väl mycket för att rädda Enak ur diverse knipor…

Anyway, för mig en tidsmaskin och direktbiljett till pojkdrömmar om hjältar i svunna tider.

Den Etruskiska graven

Supersnygg serie i klassisk stil först definerad av Herge. Kolla in den inofficiella sajten.

Alla album finns inte på svenska men jag tror jag har alla som kom ut i Sverige.

Mic setup with Edirol FA-66

r4ndom — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 10:23:09 +0000

Yes, using ffado on F14 the Edirol(Roland) Fa-66 works nicely at 96khz and 24bit. Mic setup with a Rode NT1A fed by the FA-66 was easy using QJackctl.

I must admit this is a very silent mic and a pretty cheap one at that. I am using firewire setting in jack and 128/3 buffersetting. 4ms latency. I get some xruns but not when recording only when there are other problems such as a hanging qjackctl.

Midicontrollers in QTractor

r4ndom — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 10:12:55 +0000

Great new feature of QTractor 0.4.8 is the midi controller learn feature which enables easy mapping of external midi controller sliders/buttons to pan, gain … qtractor controls. Just right-click on the control in the mixer select controller and move the physical controller to ”teach” qtractor what controller input to listen to.

I did read somewhere that transport controls are supposed to work automatically if midi control is enabled and a GM controller map is selected. Not any map on my Roland A800Pro works. I can see midi arriving in QTractor when i press transport controls but nothing happens. Ideas anyone? My next move is to see if i can find map details of a map that works.

Midi input and QTractor

r4ndom — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 10:07:14 +0000

After at bit of fiddling with midi input and QTractor i found out how to do it. a2jmidi solved the ”problem” of QTractor not having a jack midi port. Just ran it: $a2jmidi -e & and got all the alsa ports visible in the midi-tab of QJackctl/connections.

Agere Fedora driver…

r4ndom — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 08:06:15 +0000

Well i am no longer in possession of the laptop so i can’t test anymore, but i did run the staged driver(see earlier post) with F14 and it worked.
No sign of the driver being anything but staged though.

Sorry, but i am unable to help further with Agere Nics, but try the staged driver. My guess is that it will work for some time to come.

Bump in the road: F14, Lowlatency, rt-kernels….ATI

r4ndom — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 07:35:08 +0000

Stuff you don’t need to read if you only want to make music. I’ll let you know what the solution is when i find it.

Seems i am ”stuck in the middle”. No default rt or preempt kernel for the latest kernel series for F14, Ubuntu Studio which also works with my 3d acceleration for my Radeon card.
Needs looking into. Right now running kernel from CCRMA F14 repository but no 3d for my ATI Radeon 5xxx series card. The card works in 2d but moving a window fast fills it with junk.

Tried akmods but module is not built although i have all dependencies…i think.

I’ll dig some more.

Ideas?

Routing audio and midi with Jack Audio Connection Kit

r4ndom — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 11:42:22 +0000

So i’ve just started but i can already tell Jack is a fantastic piece of software.

Ever wanted to route sound and/or midi from one application to another to any device to any output via ”anywhere”? Well, basically that is what Jack allows you to do.

Jack enables you route audio and midi internally in the computer and to external devices. The graphical interface Jackctl has a simple drag/drop interface. Just drag a source to its destination and you can even have session support integrated into your DAW. QTractor for instance remebers your setup for a song and reloads it when its needed.

Well, setting this up on other platforms may be a ”cakewalk”, pun intended. Please remember i am new to this and it is free software.

I haven’t gotten far enough with my setup to tell you anything useful yet but i’ll be back.

Ok, new beginnings with music(?)….

r4ndom — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 11:31:59 +0000

After being inactive on the recording front for a couple of hundred years i have invested in some tech to help(?) me start creating or more like recording music again. Well, i have a piano but its hard(for me) to complete stuff without recording it. This is partly due to the fact that i am not skilled enough in the art of performing. I need some tools. Since i am more into ideas than the art of playing an instrument its not a problem. I just need some tools.

Being an advocate of open source software free as in ”free speech”, not as in ”free as beer”, i have decided to start climbing on what i expect will be a steep learning curve for me. Musical end results aside i hope to be able to contribute back to some of the many projects i will be using. Maybe, i’ll be able to contribute with documentation so that others find it easier to start music creation with open source software.

Well, here is what i got:

- Core i7 generic pc
- Fedora 14 operating system
- Röde NT1A mic
- SM Audio Mic Thing
- Roland FA-66 Firewire audio interface 192KHz/24bit
- Roland A800 Pro midicontroller

- QTractor
- Jack
- Linuxsampler/Qsampler
- Hydrogen
- Fluidsynth/QSynth
- Jack-rack
- Loads of plugins, effects

Older synths:
- Roland Jupiter 6
- Bit-99
- Some old modular synths and drum machines

So its basically just a computer and loads of free software. You need cables, interface, mic and such regardless of what platform you choose for your recording/creative environment.

I have just begun to set it up but i know some of you that did not even know you could produce music using other products than those from Apple may wonder ”What can you do with the software? What software instruments are there?”

Follow me as i discover that myself

Agere et131x driver for Fedora 11/12 finally….

r4ndom — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:55:30 +0000

If you like me have a laptop with an Agere ET1310 nic running 2.6.29.4-167.fc11.i586….you’re out of luck, for now. Or at least were

I looked everywhere, tried all drivers and patches to no avail. Well, there weren’t that many drivers just the one on Sourceforge but i couldn’t get it working on my brand new F11. Found relevant issue on RH Bugzilla but they claim that the driver on SF was *far* from ready for upstream inclusion into the main kernel tree. So i simply took what was staged in the kernel git repo for 2.6. Modified the makefile a little and hey …it looks like it is working. I am posting this connecting via the driver but like always YMMV…

From the Readme:

”This is a driver for the ET1310 network device. Based on the driver found at https://sourceforge.net/projects/et131x/

Cleaned up immensely by Olaf Hartman and Christoph Hellwig ”

I put together what you need here.

How to use it:

tar zxvf et131x_staged_2_6_git.tar.gz

cd et131x_staged_2_6_git

make

cp et131x.ko /lib/modules/2.6.29.4-167.fc11.i586/kernel/drivers/net

chmod 744 /lib/modules/2.6.29.4-167.fc11.i586/kernel/drivers/net/et131x.ko

depmod -a

modprobe et131x

Check success with dmesg…

Writing this just in case it is of use to anyone.

Update: Works with all F11 kernel versions up to and including 2.6.29.6-217.2.8.fc11.i686.PAE.

Update2: Works with 2.6.29.6-217.2.16.fc11.i686.PAE.

Update3: Some problems with driver at really high loads. Kernel oops when i push it and transfer close to 100mbit/s.
After error, module is corrupt in memory and needs to be reloaded.
Nothing you do every day though.

Update4: Staged 2.6.32 planned for December release will probably contain the et131x driver.

From the ”linux kernel monkey log”: ”eth131x driver. Alan Cox is working on fixing up the issues in this driver. Hopefully it will get into mergable shape soon.”

Update5: Works with F12.

Update6: Works with all Fedora 11/12 kernels up to and including 2.6.31.9-174.fc12.i686.PAE.

Update7: Driver scheduled for inclusion with 2.6..33. Quote: ”et131x – loads of cleanups, more left to do. Good solid progress happening here.”