fl0blog

I upgraded someone’s computer over the weekend, and made the mistake to install Win XP instead of Ubuntu or something similar. In addition to being illegal, this was also a big mistake. I will have to learn to better re-enforce my ‘no open source, no can do’ policy*.

They had an old (however PCI-based) sound card, and the damn OS does not have drivers for it. Even searching half the internet for OPTi Inc EV1935 ECTIVA MachOne PCI Audio and its variations, I could not find a working driver.

Just out of misery I even tried some drivers for cards from the same chip set family.

I was completely amazed that even my trusty Knoppix CD could not get any sound out of it. And reading requests for help with no answer, I decided that the situation was hopeless.

Impossible! Indeed; I have now discovered that I was, of course, erratic and ALSA does support this awfully bad card.

(*): however, I’m kind of glad that I set them up with Firefox and Thunderbird — this will spare them (and, eventually, myself) many spyware headaches. They seem to be very happy with it, except for the fact that the online banking site of Citibank refuses to work with Firefox.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 2nd, 2005 at 6:39 and is filed under English, Hardware. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.