[PlanetCCRMA] Help! HDSP firmware suddenly fails to load...

[Michael E. Smith]

I've just upgraded my two CCRMA boxes to the latest from the CCRMA
repositories and now my Digiface firmware won't load:

        hdsploader - firmware loader for RME Hammerfall DSP cards
        Looking for HDSP + Multiface or Digiface cards :
        Card 0 : RME Hammerfall DSP at 0x3e800000, irq 11
        Upload firmware for card hw:0
        Hwdep ioctl error on card hw:0 : Invalid argument.
        
This is the first time since switching to Fedora Core 2 and CCRMA that
I've had a problem with the HDSP.

Both machines refuse to load the firmware similarly, but not quite the
same. To wit, the laptop (cardbus/digiface) consistantly produces the
above error, while the desktop (pci/digiface) does it once and then
doesn't see a card at all.

It does, however, show up (on both machines) on an lspci listing. Also,
snd-hdsp shows up in lsmod.

dmesg snippet:

        ALSA /usr/src/rpm/BUILD/alsa-driver-1.0.8/alsa-kernel/pci/rme9652/hdsp.c:647: 
        	Hammerfall-DSP: no Digiface or Multiface connected!
        ALSA /usr/src/rpm/BUILD/alsa-driver-1.0.8/alsa-kernel/pci/rme9652/hdsp.c:5086:
        	 card initialization pending : waiting for firmware
        
It would appear as though the firmware is attempting to be loaded
automatically at some point during user login (I can see from the lights
on the digiface), resulting in the error even before I attempt to load
it using hdsploader. 

This behavior happens with the following kernels:

	2.6.10-0.1.rdt.rhfc2.ccrma
	2.6.10-0.2.rdt.rhfc2.ccrma	
	2.6.10-2.1.ll.rhfc2.ccrma

all of which use alsa 1.0.8 while

	2.6.7-1.437.1.ll.rhfc2.ccrma

uses alsa 1.0.5 and does not exhibit the problem.

Is the problem obviously with alsa itself, or with the delivery of the
firmware? What's a good way to investigate? 
	
If anyone else has experienced this and/or can point me in the right
direction, I'd be grateful to hear from you.

Finally, thanks, Fernando. You do amazing work. For this one serious
problem, I've had countless things go seriously RIGHT since I've been
using CCRMA.

Later,

Michael