# The isa card "Creative SB AWE64  PnP" couldn't start working

## wers

Hello. It seens to be i sucsessfully added drivers for my Creative AWE 64 ISA card.

 But when i tried to start alsa, i received the following:

```
/etc/init.d/alsasound start

 * Caching service dependencies ...                                                                                                                     [ ok ]

 * Loading ALSA modules ...

 *   Could not detect custom ALSA settings.  Loading all detected alsa drivers.

 *   Unable to find any ALSA drivers. Have you compiled alsa-drivers correctly?

 *   ERROR: Failed to load necessary drivers                                                                                                            [ ok ]

 * Restoring Mixer Levels ...

 * No mixer config in /var/lib/alsa/asound.state, you have to unmute your card!        
```

 Then i look thourogly in my dmesg and find:

```

[    0.220445] isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...

[    0.382501] pnp 01:01.00: increased option port range from 0x388-0x388 to 0x388-0x3f8

[    0.382684] pnp 01:01.00: increased option port range from 0x388-0x388 to 0x388-0x3f8

[    0.382860] pnp 01:01.00: increased option port range from 0x388-0x388 to 0x388-0x3f8

[    0.383261] pnp 01:01.02: added ioport region 0xe20-0xe20 to set 0

[    0.383372] pnp 01:01.02: added ioport region 0xa20-0xa20 to set 0

[    0.383480] pnp 01:01.02: added ioport region 0xe20-0xe80 to set 1

[    0.383588] pnp 01:01.02: added ioport region 0xa20-0xa80 to set 1

[    0.394761]  01:01: card 'Creative SB AWE64  PnP'

[    0.394869]  01:02: card '3Com 3C509B EtherLink III'

************************************************************

[    1.077268] sbawe 01:01.00: unable to assign resources

[    1.077386] sbawe: AUDIO pnp configure failure

[    1.077730] ALSA device list:

[    1.077835]   No soundcards found.

```

 COuld you please help me to make this old card working?

 Alex.

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## NeddySeagoon

wers,

Under Linux, ISA Plug and Pray does not work very well, if at all. The ISA standard was not designed to support the PnP concept and it was difficult to graft on as an afterthought.

If your card has jumpers to turn PnP off, turn it off and set the I/O address, IRQ, and DMA manually, on other jumpers.

You need to ensure you pick unique resources, or neither your sound card, nor the other device that shares the resources will work.

When you load the module for your card, you pass the resources as module parameters.

```
modinfo <sound-card-module>
```

 will show you how. That can be automated once you know what works.

Thats the easy way.

If you can't turn off PnP, its harder. 

```
emerge sys-apps/isapnptools
```

It will do its best to scan your system and tell you what resouces are allocated where. Your sound card should be listed with the resources that isapnptools claims are allocated. 

Look at the entire list, ensure everything has unique resources. If not, juggling I/O addresses and IRQs can be a problem. ISA cards will not share.

When you load the module for your card, you pass the resources as module parameters.

It gets more complex if your system is an ISA/PCI mixed system, since PnP is a part of the PCI standard.

In this case, your BIOS will have a page where you can reserve resources for ISA cards. This prevents the PCI PnP from allocating them to PCI cards, which in turn, will stop things from working.

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## krinn

did you run alsaconf ?

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