HOWTO: MobilePre (or Sonica/Ozone/Transit/Audiophile USB) with firmware loader

[paulg]

*****See the new thread for insrtuctions in using madfuload in Hardy. The howto below applies to Fiesty and Gutsy only******

First of all, the newer MobilePre's apparently work out of a box in which case you will not need to do anything. I have a MobilePre circa. 2003 which requires the firmware loader to work. If you follow these steps you should be able to replace MobilePre with Sonica/Ozone/Transit/Audiophile USB if you have one of the other devices. The older devices require firmware and loader available here:
http://usb-midi-fw.sourceforge.net/

This had been working for me for sometime and seemed to be set-off by Dapper (?) to some degree and now definitely would not work with Fiesty. I read on a post about a person who could boot into Windows, let Windows load the firmware and then boot into Linux without powering down and have it work. That's when I realized I had the same issue. From what I can tell, an upgrade to udev has rendered the udev rule file the installer copies over useless. I found this solution in the bug-tracker on sourceforge and it fixed my problem. Hot-plugging of my MobilePre works again! Here's how I did it.

1. Install the firware from the link above. Install directions are given on the site and view the README in the tarball for more help on compiling.
2. The installer will create a udev rule in /etc/udev/rules.d/42-madfuload.rules
   You will need to open the file with your favourite editor. I suggest the following command in terminal:
   

   ~$ sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/42-madfuload.rules

3. Basically all of the lines are incorrect so you may as well comment all of them with a '#'. You could delete them but you may want to keep the one for the MobilePre so you can copy the product ID and firmware.
4. Find the entry for MobilePre (or Sonica/Ozone/Transit/Audiophile) create a new line and paste the following
   

   ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0763", SYSFS{idProduct}=="2804", RUN+="/usr/local/sbin/madfuload -l -3 -f /usr/local/share/usb/maudio/ma004103.bin -D $env{DEVNAME}"

5. Replace the product ID and the firmware (file name ending with '.bin') in the above line with your device ID. Summary is below but you should be able to verify this in the original udev rule file.
   
   • MobilePre
     Product ID == 2804
     firmware == ma004103.bin
     
   • Sonica
     Product ID == 2805
     firmware == ma005101.bin
     
   • Ozone
     Product ID == 2808
     firmware == ma008100.bin
     
   • Transit
     Product ID == 2806
     firmware == ma006100.bin
     
   • Audiophile USB
     Product ID == 2803
     firmware == ma003101.bin
6. Just need to restart the udev listening engine:
   

    $ sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart

If you have questions post below and I'll do my best to respond.

UPDATE 2007/10/20: Per sonium's post below, I can confirm that this works in Gutsy. Updating from Feisty did not break it.

~pAul.

[Chris Parsons]

I have tried to install the new firmware off of the given link and recieve the following error message.

checking for gcc... gcc checking for C compiler default output file name... configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables See `config.log' for more details.

Yes, i'm a noob...

thanks for your time

[paulg]

Try:

~/$ sudo aptitude install build-essential

That should get you going. Looks like you're missing the 'C' compiler and probably some other things. The 'build essential' package should install everything you need to use make successfully. Let me know how it goes.

[paletti]

thanks this worked fine for me , i can see the ozone now in the device manager...

now it's time to get lost in ubuntu studio

[sonium]

Thank you, I was looking for a year for something like this. Also works on 7.10 x64. You made my day

[silicium]

Hi,
how do you check if the firmware is loaded when plugging the MobilePre, and where is the device manager ? I'm new to linux (but not to other unix). I installed Ubuntu studio 7.10 on an used server (Asus CUR-DLS, 1 GB ECC, dual P3/933, 18 GB U160), then followed this HOWTO. Booting install CD required noapic nolapic options. After installing, I tried to look at the status of my USB devices, but lsusb hangs and does not respond to kill -9.

[paulg]

'lsusb' would tell you if the firmware had loaded. You can also check with alsa using the command 'asoundconf list' which will list all valid [Alsa] soundcards in the system. If it has installed it will show up here.

OK, I had to look up what those boot options were and I'm still not sure I understand but I'll just throw some things to try anyway (in no particular order)...

You needed these boot parameters to install but have you tried disabling the options and booting normal since you've installed them? From my basic understanding isn't APIC necessary for PCI/USB control in a SMP system? If that's correct then you are disabling USB at boot so of course calling the bus with lsusb wouldn't work....

Could you try acpi=off and lapci=off as alternatives? (this goes against what I suggest above but yeah, really just throwing out everything I'm finding)

I also found a couple interesting answers here and here.

Try installing one of the other kernels. Perhaps -386 instead of generic. Or boot into an alternative kernel and purge the generic kernel and then reinstall it (sudo aptitude purge linux-image-generic).

Are you running a kernel for SMP systems? I *think* the current generic kernels support SMP but I'm not sure. I ran a dual celeron system way back and had to roll my own kernel to enable SMP support.

Could you try a 2.4 kernel build? (I don't know if they are still loading pre-built 2.4 kernels into the repository)

Do you have the latest BIOS for the board installed? (note there's always some risk in damaging your equipment when updating the motherboard BIOS make sure you read the manufacturers directions)

http://support.asus.com/download/dow...Language=en-us

That's all I have right now. If I think of anything else I'll post it. By all means post back if something works. I'd personally start with the easy stuff (kernel boot parameter changes, BIOS) and then move onto the more tricky things like compiling a kernel.

[silicium]

Thanks for fast support. Latest BIOS has been flashed. Unlike install CD that required option noapic, grub's default menu.lst boots without any extra option. But lsusb still hangs even before plugging any USB device. The kernel is SMP (see attached dmesg). I found that the quad ethernet card shares IRQ 30 with USB ohci_hcd that complains (Unlink after no-irq...). The USB OHCD has PCI IRQ9 under Win2K while PnP ACPI subsystem has ISA IRQ9 and NICs have 20/21/29/31/30. So Linux disables the ISA IRQ and this prevents it from beeing used from the PCI bus...

[tktabla]

Hi all
I am trying to use MobilePre on a brand new HP box with the latest Debian distribution. Since I have Kernel 2.6 alsa is already included and since I got my MobilePre 1 year ago (silver and black model of course) it should work out of the box but it does not.
I followed the steps in the first post (BTW great info, thanks!) but it still does not work.

/proc/asound cards shows the following:

 0 [Intel          ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel
                      HDA Intel at 0xfdff8000 irq 193
 1 [MobilePre      ]: USB-Audio - MobilePre
                      M Audio MobilePre at usb-0000:00:1d.1-1, full speed

so the card is there but if I start Audacity for example, nothing is shown in the two "Device:" drop-down menues at Preferences>Audio I/O.

Since I am not a Linux guru I am kind of lost. Any ideas?

Many thanks in advance.

Gian

[silicium]

Good news ! The IRQ mapping was corrected with boot option acpi=force. 'lsusb' can see my USB devices and I will proceed with firmware downloader installation...