Hi all, I just want to thank you for building a distro to revive my old P200 box.  Yes, it's below the system reqs, but hey, it runs a lot faster than I expected!  I tried Xubuntu before, and it was quite slow.  Fedora was even worse.

Anyways, here's my problem.  I want to play music on it, but it can't detect my sound card.  Nor can any other distro.  I fixed this on Xubuntu by running "sudo modprobe snd-es1688" and then entering snd-es1688 into /etc/modules.  I did a "modprobe snd-es1688" here in su mode and it doesn't work.  It says it can't find /etc/modprobe.d/sound, nor can it find module snd-es1688.

On a side note, Zen, as well as some other distros, says "Undefined video mode, press spacebar....... wait 30 seconds" at boot time, is there a way to get rid of it?

Hmm soundcard driver not compiled?

find /lib/modules -name snd-es1688
no match

generic kernel not supported this card
compile alsa-driver with ess1688 and run alsaconf

Videomode not supported: videocard not vesa 2.0 compatible, see /etc/lilo.conf, and modify
vga=..... line
->
vga=normal

As far as i know, for the snd-es1688 you will have to compile a kernel with (as module..) some isa sound card(s) enabled. I had to di the same for a Compaq Armada (P/II, 233 MHz  )

Not very difficult:

- get the kernel source package
- in the kernel source dir:
- run 'make menuconfig'
- enable (as module) your sound-card
- run 'make'
- install (modules and kernel..)
- run 'lilo'
- reboot
- enable your sound module

This is the 'short version' of the list: there is a 'kernel-building howto' somewhere in the forum if i'm not mistaken...

Zenwalk has no ISA support at all (deprecated since 10 years, sorry)

Cheers

JP

Aye!  And I thought I found the perfect quick distro for my old box.   Heck, I even got compositing working!

I don't think I'll be compiling any kernels on that thing, it'd take way too long!  And the last time I compiled a kernel on my main machine it borked sound. 

Anyone got recommendations for a quick Xfce distro, just as light as Zen, but with old sound support?  Or maybe a distro I can customize myself to remove all the bloat, without having to select each and every package?

Thanks!

You may try Vector Linux. It's also based on Slackware and intended for old machines. But I don't know whether it supports your sound out of box or not.

Now that I think of it...  I don't want to waste CD's jumping from distro to distro.  I think I'll just build my own Gentoo.

I doubt that that's going to be faster in the compiling than only building your on kernel... 

True, but then I'd have total control of my system as well as some optimizations.

On a second thought...  Where'd the howto compile a new kernel? 

Testing my compiled kernel supported old isa sound and network card: Download 9 Mb.
Run: upgradepkg kernel-2.6.17.8-i486-1ned.tgz
Reboot, run alsaconf.

This kernel package no official!

Wow!  I'm surfing the net and blasting music again!  And it's all so fast...

Thanks for the kernel, and thanks to the Zenwalk team for such a great distro!  And once Rockbox will finally be ported to the gigabeat, I'll play music directly off it.

If I were you, I would think twice. If you don't want to compile just kernel, do you want to compile the whole system? Don't you think that you won't have to compile kernel in Gentoo 

Don't be so sure. I tried Gentoo with unnoficial optimzation: gcc 4.1.1, glibc 2.4 and some optimization flags,  don't remember them at the moment. It's not such faster (if it is at all  ) to recognize it.

All's Good That Ends Well 

Yes!!