[SLUG] Suse sound (again, but new scenario)

[Paul Teasdale]

On Thu, April 20, 2006 11:57, john at johnallsopp.co.uk wrote:
>
> I started out thinking this would be something simple, something
> someone knew about. So I asked here, then I escalated to Catux, then I
> went global. No joy. So it's not a simple thing, and no-one knows the
> answer, or I'm a pain in the arse, or I showed insufficient effort to
> understand the problem myself.
>
I still wouldn't give on trying to get the sound working. I know you're
going shout bar steward at me but I have a Realtek ALC850 sound chip on my
motherboard and it works fine but it's not very helpful just to put on a
post saying mine works. Ha ha. So some did I get it working?

Well when I first installed the PC (with Debian Sarge AMD64) it was 2.6.8
kernel by default. Lots of hardware did not really work correctly or in
some cases did not work at all. This included one of the network cards
(mobo has two), SATA and I think, just think (aka can't remember), sound
didn't work.

Now the system is still Debian Sarge except for the kernel which I have
rebuilt several times. This is not because of problems but I like to keep
kernels up-to-date to take advantage of new features.

I initially compiled kernel 2.6.12 and started from Debians own 2.6.12
kernel configuration. I didn't alter this much at all except for getting
rid of some hard disk controllers that were loading up as permanent
modules even though my system didn't have the hardware installed. Debian
enables sound (see my reply to your step 2 question below), OSS and ALSA
by default and I would be very confident most other distro producers do
this too. What I'm saying here is I didn't change it. Also bear in mind
that I statred from the Debian kernel source with all the Debian patches
applied. What I am saying here is that Debian may have put some patch in
the kernel that allows this sound chip to work.

After installing the new kernel everything worked (as I required anyhow)
except for the second NIC. I am now on kernel 2.6.15 and the NIC still
doesn't work (but does with SuSE 10 on my test partition so it is possible
to get it working).

Here are some tips:

Use a relatively new version of SuSE. Version 10 (Kernel 2.6.13 I think)
works my sound chip without any extra fiddling.

Use a relatively new version of the kernel (for me I needed 2.6.12 or
higher) if using an older version of Linux as Debian Sarge is now.

As you have already figured out it uses the ALSA snd_intel_8x0 module.

You probably know this but if lsmod does not show snd_intel_8x0 module as
loaded then forget trying anything else such as using alsamixer etc,
because they will not find your sound card.

I think it is true to say that Realtek only manufacture sound chips which
are then integrated onto motherboards by the mobo manufacturers. I think
it's the case that during this integration they can get "installed"
differently and/or customised by the manufacturer in different ways
therefore potentially needing driver changes to work correctly. This
happens a lot especially with winmodems (which don't concern us here but
serves to make my point). You get two modems with the same Conexant
chipset but will the drivers for one work with the other. Will they hell!
And relax.... back to Linux. After all this all I am trying to say is that
my Realtek ALC850 chipset might be integrated differently onto the
motherboard than you Realtek ALC850 chipset. FWIW my mobo is a Gigabyte
K8NXP-SLI.

>
> I'm currently stuck on the Realtek installation instruction step 2 (of
> 6) (pause for laughter). It says "Turn on sound support (soundcore
> module, default turn on)"
>
As I said earlier I think this is telling you to ensure that the kernel
has sound support turned on. This is definately not a commmand you would
put in the modules.conf(.local in SUSEs case) file. I have looked at the
drivers you are trying to complile and they actually have an example
module.conf supplied.

Hope this helps,

Regards,
Paul.