Slacko 5.7 no sound, Gigabyte motherboard (Solved)

Problems and successes with specific brands/models of computer audio hardware
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wboz
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Slacko 5.7 no sound, Gigabyte motherboard (Solved)

#1 Post by wboz »

Slacko 5.7 is, easily, the best Puppy I have used yet. I have a really high regard for Puppy Linux in general, having initially been very impressed by 5.1.3 (I think). In an era when even supposedly refined distributions like Ubuntu failed to work out of the box, and the "portable" distros like Tiny Core and DSL took hours of work to get up and running ... Puppy booted perfectly out of the box, detected my wireless card and let me get into the Linux world without having to risk an existing Windows HDD. Needless to say I was hooked by the user-friendliness that's baked in and the respect for the user. In fact it even worked better than 5.2.8 which ran hot no matter what -- but small matter since 5.1.3 was fine!

So that's my capsule review. Once again, Slacko impressed in the same way. Ubuntu needed a wired connection to get friendly with the wifi card (I have a somewhat unusual motherboard with the wireless slot prepopulated, a Gigabyte B85N-WIFI). Slacko? Answer these questions please, ok, you're ready to go! And can I mention, it looks slick and refined and professional? Using JWM? Amazing. Truly, it is.

Anyone, one issue. The sound doesn't work. I have followed both wizards and haven't had any luck. As with Wifi, my motherboard confuses (and here I thought I was keeping things simple with a business/ultra-durable motherboard!)

Two PCI devices show up in Ubuntu, System Information:
Intel Xeon E3-1200 Audio Controller
Intel 8 Series/C220 HD Audio Controller

And in the Puppy wizard 5 show up:
3 HDMI (wha?)
1 PCH Analog (this is my best guess for what I want - a headphone jack!)
1 PCH Digital

And elsewhere there's mention of a Realtek HD audio codec. Bleh.

I've never had a computer with so many sound options so it's making troubleshooting difficult. I've tried just about all of the things I can do in the wizard, and not sure where to start. If I can't solve this it's not critical, so any help is useful; I probably won't use Puppy on this computer as a primary OS. Instead I have my eye on resurrecting dad's old Toshiba NB305-N410B just for kicks. But .. you never know :D
Last edited by wboz on Thu 13 Nov 2014, 13:21, edited 2 times in total.

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ardvark
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#2 Post by ardvark »

Hi...

I'm wondering if Puppy sees more than one device here. Could you open a terminal and post the results of...

Code: Select all

aplay -l
Thanks! :)

p310don
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#3 Post by p310don »

Click the volume icon, check that all the volume controls are up. Has happened to me many times. Lots of trouble shooting to find that the volume was down or muted

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ardvark
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#4 Post by ardvark »

p310don wrote:Click the volume icon, check that all the volume controls are up. Has happened to me many times. Lots of trouble shooting to find that the volume was down or muted
I thought of the same thing but I, sometimes mistakenly, usually assume folks have covered those steps before they write. :lol:

Regards...

wboz
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#5 Post by wboz »

Thanks! Yes, the tray icon has volume maximized. Some of the configure options don't seem to work properly though (no matter which device I select in retrovol it displays only three check boxes, not any sliders or other controls).

The other question see below --

Code: Select all

# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: MID [HDA Intel MID], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: MID [HDA Intel MID], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: MID [HDA Intel MID], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC898 Analog [ALC898 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: ALC898 Digital [ALC898 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

tlchost
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#6 Post by tlchost »

I have a gigabyte mobo....never could get sound to work in precise 5.7

Try 5.71 or ovpercise, or almost any othjer puppy and you'll have sound,

I nearly gave up on precise since there was no ack of my problem, no fix, nothing.

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bigpup
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#7 Post by bigpup »

Try this:
menu->Setup->ALSA sound wizard->Multiple cards
Select:

card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC898 Analog [ALC898 Analog]


Right click on Speaker icon in tray.
Select Config Window->Hardware
Make sure this sound device is showing in the sound card window.

May have to shutdown-> Restart the graphical server
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

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ardvark
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#8 Post by ardvark »

wboz wrote:Thanks! Yes, the tray icon has volume maximized. Some of the configure options don't seem to work properly though (no matter which device I select in retrovol it displays only three check boxes, not any sliders or other controls).
Hi wboz...

If Bigpup's suggestion or any other suggestions along those lines doesn't work, this may be a driver or hardware bug that was documented back in 2012 (in Ubuntu) with another Gigabyte board and the ALC898 chip. Two bug reports were filed here and here. I don't know if this bug affects your particular board or if the issue is question ever got resolved. :(

If other suggestions don't help, you could try compiling and installing Realtek's driver (as mentioned in one of the reports and may or may not work,) or you can try out some more versions of Puppy, as tlchost mentioned.

Regards...

wboz
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#9 Post by wboz »

Thanks! I will try as you suggest tonight.

bigpup, I think I have tried those options already and either it's not working at all or the hw1 is not being shown as the selected even after the switch. I will double check and report back.

Regarding the Realtek bug, that looks potentially related. Note that the sound does work in Ubuntu so at least it's not a complete hardware defect. I'm consistently annoyed how often Realtek comes up with hardware issues. I'm sure it's not accurate to say their stuff "never works with" Linux, but it sure seems that way! If I were buying a new motherboard I'd pay more attention to the subcomponents that I did ... noob mistake I suppose.

I have actually been wanting to try the sound over HDMI, thinking that maybe it was defaulting to that output. That would be a fine workaround since the monitor can do HDMI and has its own line-out. Unfortunately when I switch the cables the OS does not switch the video-out from DVI to HDMI ... is there a manual change I have to do for that, or is that another issue for me to sort? I actually don't think I have ever used HDMI with a Puppy at all, mostly because 80% of my use was on laptops.

I could try another puppy, but first I think I will see if Slacko 5.7 works on another machine that I might actually use it in all the time, because this probably won't even be an issue there. We'll have separate and better issues, hehehe! On the desktop box, Puppy is more for rescue/troubleshooting/amoreelegantweaponforasimplertime use. And I don't need sound for that.

wboz
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#10 Post by wboz »

Here's one possible solution, or at least the problem encountered appears is very similar. I haven't had time to review in detail yet, and it's slightly technical so I'd have to actually try it before asserting it would work.would work.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... 175505881/

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ardvark
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#11 Post by ardvark »

wboz wrote:Regarding the Realtek bug, that looks potentially related. Note that the sound does work in Ubuntu so at least it's not a complete hardware defect.
Hi...

Ok, apparently, I misunderstood from a comment you made from your initial post...
In an era when even supposedly refined distributions like Ubuntu failed to work out of the box
For some reason, I thought that meant you couldn't get it to boot up at all. :wink:

Let us know what you find out.

Regards...

wboz
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#12 Post by wboz »

Ya, no problem. I meant that Ubuntu didn't fully work out of the box, ie there were some pieces that required additional work. I suppose in truth Slacko is fitting into that category, but the fact that it got the wireless card up and running by itself was nice.

I think this issue may be as at the link below, I wish I could get HDMI to work so I can test it.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=84945

wboz
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#13 Post by wboz »

Yess! Success!

So through a very complicated and possibly difficult to repeat sequence of configuring, changing, restarting and check boxing I was able to get the sound to work. I need to restart again to make sure the final changes persist (they should), but I'll try to describe herein for anyone looking for similar info; this may be useful.

The underlying problem IS that there are two sound cards and retrovol defaults to hw0 (which is HDMI on this and probably most motherboards with an HDMI out) and hw1 (which is the Realtek PCH sound card). No matter what you request in sound wizard->multiple cards, hw1 won't be selected. This can be seen in tray icon -> configure -> hardware, where hw0 is shown. [Thanks for this key tip!!!]

So, how to modify? Well this sounds daft I know, but although the hardware tab doesn't appear to let you change the card, you can ... you just need to type it in. Yes! So once you do that, you restart so it's saved, then the sound wizard does allow you to successfully select the card and THEN a configuration window with many sliders is finally shown. They're all adjusted fine, except that by the master volume is a checkbox ... which is unchecked.

Check the box. :D

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ardvark
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#14 Post by ardvark »

wboz wrote:The underlying problem IS that there are two sound cards and retrovol defaults to hw0 (which is HDMI on this and probably most motherboards with an HDMI out) and hw1 (which is the Realtek PCH sound card). No matter what you request in sound wizard->multiple cards, hw1 won't be selected. This can be seen in tray icon -> configure -> hardware, where hw0 is shown. [Thanks for this key tip!!!]
So my initial hunch was correct. I'm glad you solved it! :)

If you would, if the issue remains solved, please mark this thread as "SOLVED" by editing the subject line of your first post. Thanks! :wink:

Regards...

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darkcity
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#15 Post by darkcity »

I also have the problem of configuring two sound cards. Although in my case the card to use can not be configured as hw0 or hw1 - because the cards are not always recognised and assigned numbers in the same order at boot up. I had a script that fixed it, but since Slacko 5.5 the part of ALSA needed has been removed.

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