[PlanetCCRMA] Saffire LE silence: a few, probably dumb, questions

[sevol]

Hi Humans,

The list seems a little quiet, so thought I'd take the opportunity to
ask a few quuestions.

But first, a bit of background hum. I've been trying to get a workable
Linux DAW for... oh, it's way too embarrassing to admit in public. The
fumbling hasn't all been do to my nearly complete lack of Linux
skillz; I've had hardware issue, too, but I think mainly I don't know
what I'm doing still.

I read mailinglist & google & type stuff in the CLI, & then, I do it
all over again. But I've never gotten the audio working where it's
actually usable. & with no proper audio, I've forgotten about learning
the software that's available with Linux. I don't even try to make
music any more. I've almost stopped listening to it. I've lost all the
momentum I once had for this. Almost.

Now, for the bad news :) I can't seem to just give up.

My system:
motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-MA78G-DS3H (w/ onboard AMD 780G video &
Realtek ALC889A audio chipsets)
cpu: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Duel Core 5400+

I'm running Fedora 10 x64 with this kernel:
2.6.26.8-1.rt16.1.fc10.ccrma.x86_64.rt
&
jack-audio-connection-kit-1.9.2-1.fc10.ccrma.x86_64
&
a Focusrite Saffire LE firewire audio card
(I switched from fedora 8 to 10 toget this card running with ffado.)

After I do:
# modprobe raw1394
&
start jack:
02:21:20.636 JACK is starting...
02:21:20.637 /usr/bin/jackd -R -t15000 -dfirewire -r88200 -p256 -n3
02:21:20.653 JACK was started with PID=5934.
no message buffer overruns
no message buffer overruns
jackdmp 1.9.2
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
Copyright 2004-2008 Grame.
jackdmp comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details
JACK server starting in realtime mode with priority 10
106076163746:  (ffado.cpp)[  92] ffado_streaming_init: libffado
1.999.40- built Dec 12 2008 16:33:54
02:21:25.473 Server configuration saved to "/home/sevol/.jackdrc".

Things seem fine. But testing with a mic & Ardour there's no input
showing or any sound output. I might not have it setup right - it's
the first time I've tried Ardour. What'd be the simplist method of
testing if the card is doing it's job? I mean, what's the simplest
program to check for incoming audio signal?

Here's some other stuff - might be irrelevant:

# cat /proc/asound/devices
  2:        : timer
  3:        : sequencer
  4: [ 0- 2]: digital audio capture
  5: [ 0- 1]: digital audio playback
  6: [ 0- 1]: digital audio capture
  7: [ 0- 0]: digital audio playback
  8: [ 0- 0]: digital audio capture
  9: [ 0- 0]: hardware dependent
 10: [ 0]   : control
 11: [ 1- 3]: digital audio playback
 12: [ 1- 0]: hardware dependent
 13: [ 1]   : control

# cat /proc/interrupts
           CPU0       CPU1
  0:         85          0   IO-APIC-edge      timer
  1:       4203       3468   IO-APIC-edge      i8042
  4:          0          2   IO-APIC-edge
  6:          0          5   IO-APIC-edge      floppy
  7:          0          0   IO-APIC-edge      parport0
  8:          0          0   IO-APIC-edge      rtc0
  9:          0          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   acpi
 12:     291273       6469   IO-APIC-edge      i8042
 14:       3043    1183334   IO-APIC-edge      pata_atiixp
 15:          2        526   IO-APIC-edge      pata_atiixp
 16:       1241        242   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ohci_hcd:usb3,
ohci_hcd:usb4, HDA Intel
 17:          0         37   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ehci_hcd:usb1
 18:     212200         22   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ohci_hcd:usb5,
ohci_hcd:usb6, ohci_hcd:usb7, eth0
 19:          0         18   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ehci_hcd:usb2, HDA Intel
 22:          4   10613474   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ahci, ohci1394
NMI:          0          0   Non-maskable interrupts
LOC:  119331107  120216144   Local timer interrupts
RES:   11884641    5514268   Rescheduling interrupts
CAL:       1205        207   function call interrupts
TLB:       1669       2279   TLB shootdowns
TRM:          0          0   Thermal event interrupts
THR:          0          0   Threshold APIC interrupts
SPU:          0          0   Spurious interrupts
ERR:          0

BTW, in ALSA Mixer it shows Card: PulseAudio Chip: PulseAudio - I
can't figure out the small interface at all. I'm certain I've
overlooked something completely simple. Any pointers? Help!

Thanks,

-sevol