[sclug] Headphone socket on laptop

[Tom Carbert-Allen]

kmix and alsamixer are both just front-ends, you need to be looking at 
the ALSA version.

get the version of the alsa-driver or alsa-base package for both distro's.

It seems from the debian website that you will be runing alsa-base 
<http://packages.debian.org/stable/sound/alsa-base> (1.0.13-5) on etch 
and the latest knoppix cd contains alsa-base 1.0.13-2 (ref's below)

So why it works in one and not the other I'm not sure...BTW the latest 
is ALSA 1.0.15 final

I think a post to the ALSA mailing list with what you have learnt so far 
is the next step, they have helped me out pretty quickly in the past 
(and added my chipset id into 1.0.14)

TCA

references
http://packages.debian.org/stable/sound/
http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix/packages.txt


John Stumbles wrote:
> Tom Carbert-Allen wrote:
>> hmmm, asoundconf (sorry for typo) not showing any cards doesn't sound
>>  good, but you say you are getting sound from the internal speakers?
>> strange
>
>> The intel HDA driver is a multi level affair, it can pretty much
>> always find the basics, but needs a pin config to do advanced stuff.
>> The fact yours is showing up as "generic" probably means the version
>> of ALSA you are running doesn't have and exact pin config for your
>> board so it's using a basic pin config based on reference docs not
>> real world reports what HP are sending out (they seem to change this
>> stuff every board revision for some unknown reason). Try
>> upgrading/looking at the source/searching there mail archive to see
>> if your boards id has been added/updated. Once you have a full pin
>> config you will be able to see all the switchs, the driver supports
>> every feature of the chipset, it just doesn't know every OEM's
>> implementation of it.
>
> Just tried knoppix: kmix has a separate slider and switch for
> headphones. Both knoppix and debian (etch) have same version of kmix
> (2.6) and kde (3.5.5). In knoppix kcontrol / 'sound system' the toggle
> 'enable sound system' was unchecked (!) so I tried that in etch, but it
> doesn't make any difference to what I get in kmix.
>
> So I guess there's something different at a lower level between what
> kde/kmix is seeing in knoppix and debian. From what Tom says maybe 
> it's the version of alsa. Anyone got any ideas where to look next?
>