FreeBSD 6.0, latest TS2 -- cannot play AND use TS.

[bsduser]

Hi all,

I've looked around the forums and it seems there are not that many users using FreeBSD as a client.. I'm stuck with running TS and a game at the same time (the usual problem). Running TS alone works great, running a game alone works great. Running both will only work for the first launched program (TS or game), due to TS/game blocking the sound device.

I cannot use ALSA (BSD, not linux), cannot instruct the BSD sound driver to open dsp in read only (afaik), cannot use artsdsp (the game is a linux binary, artsdsp is a freebsd binary - won't work)

There is a linux-artsd port (my ideia being run either TS or the game using it), but linux-artsd seems broken, so that is out of the equation for now.

I have a onboard sound card which is currently not working under FreeBSD 6.0 ( lucky guy, eh? ), my idea being using a card for the mic and the other card for sound playback. However I don't know if this is possible, because as far as I remember (I'm out of town for some days, can't check that now), I cannot define a device for playback and another device for recording on TS, I can only choose a device for both). Making the game use dsp and TS use dsp1 is probably doable, however I'm not sure if it's possible due to cabling issues.

I could use the onboard LAN and remove my PCI NIC if the above is doable, however I'd like to avoid using TWO sound cards just for using TS & a game at the same time.

vchans (hw.snd.pcm0.vchans) won't work either, TS blocks them all.

At this point I'm out of ideas. Installing linux or windows for playing is completely way out of the question,as I've been using FreeBSD since 4.6 on the desktop, and I am too used to it and do all my work and web browsing etc while using it.

So any suggestions at this point are very much welcomed.. also, please don't point to any linux tutorials, those will most likely suggest ALSA workarounds, which are useless to my situation.

[bsduser]

Thanks all for the (nonexistant) help. The "support in one day" was great!

I've fixed the problem. Using two sound cards.

For any FreeBSD users reading this, the only way I've found out to use ts2 + games was to install a 2nd sound card and make ts2 use the second card. Connect the mic there, and either get a connector to connect the green cable to both sound cards, or sacrifice rear sound and connect it to the green entry on the second card. You might need to move the cable around a bit until you get good sound, if you use the rear speaker cable on the front speaker @ the second card.

It's working great now.