ISDN Cards

ISDN cards fall under the category of either direct-link devices to the Internet or replacements for standard modems or network cards. If you’re using an ISDN card to emulate a modem or network card, you should have no problem. However, if you’re using ISDN to connect to the Internet, you’ll need to install some patches. Table 1.4 lists the ISDN devices that Linux will recognize, followed by an Internet location for the appropriate patch.

If you want more information on using Linux and ISDN devices, point your Web browser to http://www.ix.de/ix/linux/linux-isdn.html.

ATM Network Adapters

Work has been done on the Efficient Networks ENI155P-MF 155 Mbps ATM adapter. You can grab a driver and description of the process from http://lrcwww.epfl.ch/linux-atm/.

Frame Relay Cards

Work has been done on a driver for the Sangoma S502 56K Frame Relay card. You can grab a copy from ftp://ftp.sovereign.org/pub/wan/fr/.

Other Devices

These days, it’s hard to buy a PC that’s not gussied up with a slew of additional components, such as sound boards and network cards. In this section, we’ll run down the most popular of the add-ons and other miscellaneous components.

Sound Boards

Linux supports a wide range of sound cards, including: 6850 UART MIDI; Adlib (OPL2); Audio Excell DSP16; Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro; cards based on the Crystal CS4232 (plug-and-play); ECHO-PSS cards (Orchid SoundWave32, Cardinal DSP16); Ensoniq SoundScape; Gravis Ultrasound; Gravis Ultrasound 16-bit sampling daughterboard; Gravis Ultrasound MAX; Logitech SoundMan Games (SBPro, 44kHz stereo support); Logitech SoundMan Wave (Jazz16/OPL4); Logitech SoundMan 16 (PAS-16 compatible); MPU-401 MIDI; MediaTriX AudioTriX Pro; Media Vision Premium 3D (Jazz16); Media Vision Pro Sonic 16 (Jazz); Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum 16; Microsoft Sound System (AD1848); OAK OTI-601D cards (Mozart); OPTi 82C928/82C929 cards (MAD16/MAD16 Pro); Sound Blaster; Sound Blaster Pro; Sound Blaster 16 (not plug-and-play!); Turtle Beach Wavefront cards (Maui, Tropez); and Wave Blaster (and other daughterboards).

In addition, the following sound boards can be coaxed into working under Linux, provided you install the proper patches and drivers (which can be found at the accompanying Internet addresses): MPU-401 MIDI (ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/sound/mpu401-0.2.tar.gz); PC speaker/parallel-port DAC (ftp://ftp.informatik.hu-berlin.de/pub/os/linux/hu-sound/); and Turtle Beach MultiSound/Tahiti/Monterey (ftp://ftp.cs.c olorado.edu/users/mccreary/archive/tbeach/multisound/).

Not every feature on every sound board is supported, however. The ASP chip on Sound Blaster 16 series and AWE32 is not supported, and neither is the AWE32’s onboard E-mu MIDI synthesizer.

Also, the Sound Blaster 16 with DSP 4.11 and 4.12 has a hardware bug that causes hung/stuck notes when playing MIDI and digital audio at the same time.

Why would you use a sound board and Linux? Well, Doom works much better when there’s sounds of agony to accompany the splattering bits of blood and brain tissue. In addition, there’s a new breed of Internet audio software that’s actually supported for use under Linux. Some of it’s actually pretty cool, such as the Real Audio real-time audio decoder. We’ll be covering sound, Linux, and the Internet throughout the course of this book.

Mouse and Joystick

We’ve used various mice with Linux, mostly under the auspices of the X Window System. Basically, if you use a serial mouse with Linux, you’ll just be telling the system to look to a specific serial port for the mouse. (You’ll learn this in Chapter 2 and the Linux installation.) The same goes for trackballs and joysticks that run off a serial port. The following mouse models are explicitly supported under Linux: Microsoft serial mouse, Mouse Systems serial mouse, Logitech Mouseman serial mouse, Logitech serial mouse, ATI XL Inport busmouse, C&T 82C710 (QuickPort; used on Toshiba, TI Travelmate laptops), Microsoft busmouse, Logitech busmouse, and the PS/2 (auxiliary device) mouse.

To use other mouse models, you’ll need to grab a patch. These would include the Sejin J-mouse (the patch is at ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/patches/console/jmouse.1.1.70-jmouse.tar.gz) and MultiMouse, which uses multiple mouse devices as a single mouse (the patch is at ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/Misc/MultiMouse-1.0.tgz).

If your joystick doesn’t work, you may want to check out one of the joystick drivers at ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/patches/console/joystick-0.7.3.tgz or ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/patches/console/joyfixed.tgz.

In addition, touchpads that emulate a mouse (like the Alps Glidepoint) should work if they precisely emulate a supported mouse.