2.16: onboard sound won't work. (Solved, sorta)

[jonyo]

Wish I'da known that at the time ..every little bit helps thx. Afaik though, after the 5 second thing (at least live CD) the upgrade'd begin & dunno what might happen by hittin ctrl-p at that point.

... in a live CD save file to HD setup, if you install an upgrade disk, shortly into the boot, it pauses & you only have
5 SECONDS to at least punch in something..like the 'p' in puppy pfix=ram to stop the boot; otherwise pup continues on to upgrade. ...

jonyo, "ctrl-p" will pause the boot process indefinitely. You can take your time reading and typing, then resume booting with "enter"

[iscraigh]

Okay I am going to add to this

Same onboard sound chip, weird thing is I can play .mp3 files and .ogg files but not .wav or say youtube videos. .avi movies work ok.

any ideas?

Craig

[Béèm]

most sound cards, whether intel or via or onboard or a soundblaster card uses the ac97 codec ... the ac97 codec is the digital to analog convertor

Thank you G2 for explaining this. I thought AC'97 was the hw sound card, but it's only the DAC.
Now I understand why the PCI device is Intel 82801DB-ICH4

[BrianE]

Thanks for everyone's replies.

aplay -l

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: V8237 [VIA 8237], device 0: VIA 8237 [VIA 8237]
Subdevices: 4/4
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
card 0: V8237 [VIA 8237], device 1: VIA 8237 [VIA 8237]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

scanpci

I basically get all the controllers on the PCI bus (neat ) and it lists the VT8237 as my PCI and ISA bridge, but I assume the relevant one is:

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x11 function 0x05: vendor 0x1106 device 0x3059
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller

do you get any error message from this:

aplay /usr/share/audio/2barks.wav

Hmm... it thinks it's playing it:

Playing WAVE '/usr/share/audio/2barks.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono

does it do anything if you type:

rmmod snd_via82xx
modprobe snd_via82xx ac97_quirk=0
does trying ac97_quirk=1 (or 2, 3, 4) do anything?

The first command gives:
ERROR: Module snd_via82xx is in use

And changing the Quirk does not output anything and also does not let sound play when I test it either.

I read that thread over at Ubuntuforums and I realized it's the same thing I read earlier, which is where I got the idea to try turning everything on in alsamixer.

From Béèm's suggestion I get:

Code: Select all

sh-3.00# lsmod | grep "snd"
snd_pcm_oss            46336  0 
snd_mixer_oss          17328  2 snd_pcm_oss
snd_via82xx            27720  3 
gameport               14904  1 snd_via82xx
snd_ac97_codec         90448  1 snd_via82xx
snd_ac97_bus            2128  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm                77592  4 snd_pcm_oss,snd_via82xx,snd_ac97_codec
snd_timer              23540  1 snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc         10008  2 snd_via82xx,snd_pcm
snd_mpu401_uart         8112  1 snd_via82xx
snd_rawmidi            24064  1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_device          7996  1 snd_rawmidi
snd                    51396  12 snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_via82xx,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device
soundcore               9408  2 snd 

I notice I have a few extra things in there that Béèm does not, but I am not sure if that is because I tried turning on everything in alsamixer or not... Does anyone see anything out of place?

[BrianE]

Hmm.... (or uh-oh?)

Looking at the Ubuntuforums page again I noticed that it suggested doing a lspci -v and that I should see a sound device listed.

I looked at the output of that command I do not see anything that I can identify as a sound device listed. It gives a lot of information like IRQs, memory addresses, and some other info, but unless I really don't know what I'm looking for I don't see anything related to the sound system...

The forum page says that this may be because it is not enabled in BIOS (it is), or the PCI card isn't installed/seated.... I hope this doesn't mean I have a hardware failure and the sound chip is fried!

[BrianE]

Something is very strange.

Doing some checking, it seems that the VIA VT8237 southbridge includes audio functionality, but there is an actual Realtek ALC655 chip on my motherboard, and I am pretty sure that is what it uses.

I wonder if things are wonky because a normal K8V-MX motherboard uses an ADI sound chip but my OEM (/S) model uses the Realtek chip.... why do I not see any Realtek drivers listed on the ALSA website or in the file modules.pcimap?


I went to Realtek's website and downloaded a driver(?) file named realtek-linux-audiopack-4.05f.tar.bz2 (Version 4.05f.... I assumed this was a better idea than the slightly newer one written for 2.2/2.4 kernel?) Got it here btw. But I want to know if I'm barking up the right or wrong tree here before I try to deal with this thing called *.tar.bz2 now....

(Is there a more generic existing driver I could try first?)

Thanks.

EDIT: Okay, maybe the two aren't separate after all. Alsamixer calls the VT8237 the "card" and the ALC655 the "chip"... there is talk like this also elsewhere like on the ALSA wiki.

I vaguely recall having to install Realtek drivers to get sound working when I was using this mb with Win XP, so could it be that I need to do the same here?

[BrianE]

I tried another distro on this machine (PCLOS) and I couldn't get it to work either....

Am I looking at a hardware problem?

[GuestToo]

Dunno why you mention "the ac97 codec is the digital to analog convertor"
here or what it means?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ac97

"AC'97 (short for Audio Codec '97) is Intel Corporation's Audio "Codec" standard ... Intel's use of the word audio codec refers to signals being encoded/decoded to/from analog audio from/to digital audio, thus actually a combined audio AD/DA-converter"

[GuestToo]

it looks like the drivers are installed, and aplay is playing the 2barks.wav file ... i'm not sure why you do not hear the sound

[BrianE]

Well I give up... assuming I'm not overlooking anything or there isn't something wrong with ALSA (I really doubt it, but who knows...), then I'm looking at the unlikely possibility that the onboard sound is damaged somehow.

I finally got sound to work with Puppy - AFTER I installed an old Creative Audigy card I got my hands on. Hardly the solution I was after and even this obsolete card is overkill, but at least installing it was a breeze. I had sound working in about 30 seconds!

It's strange though, because everything else on the MB seems to be working fine.... pretty selective, whatever messed up the o/b sound.

Anyway, thank you for everyone's help in trying to resolve this.

[iscraigh]

I don't think it is your mb I have the same sound chip and no success under puppy although it has worked intermittantly. Under Ubuntu it works fine, If you really want to test it use the bootable ubuntu or knoppix disk and see it it works.


Craig

[kleung21]

I cannot claim to have come up with this myself.

Some 18yo on his blog discussed this regarding the MX3230 Gateway laptop.

Seems like it's an issue with the Via sound chip (and yes, it runs a realtek chip for some reason).

Anyways, you have to go into ALSAMIXER and disable the external amplifier option.

don't just turn it down, make sure you switch it off (tab over the EXT amp and hit the <period> key.

Hope that helps. I've managed to get wave files playing now but still can't hear Youtube.

Kevin

[battleshooter]

I cannot claim to have come up with this myself.

Some 18yo on his blog discussed this regarding the MX3230 Gateway laptop.

Seems like it's an issue with the Via sound chip (and yes, it runs a realtek chip for some reason).

Anyways, you have to go into ALSAMIXER and disable the external amplifier option.

don't just turn it down, make sure you switch it off (tab over the EXT amp and hit the <period> key.

Hope that helps. I've managed to get wave files playing now but still can't hear Youtube.

Kevin

Doesn't bother me you didn't come up with it, saved me last night when I was trying to setup Puppy on a laptop and sound refused to work. Had ago at your solution and... yeehaa! Thanks!

Battleshooter

[sindi]

1GHz DFI computer with onboard via 82xx sound. Sound setup worked,
then when I tried to play 2barks.wav got one bark, a bit of silence,
another bark, then did not work again. Disabled onboard sound.
Put in an ISA Vibra 16 and chose legacy sb16, and that worked, once
but not again. Took it out, tried a Creative SB16 which did not work,
and a Crystal ISA which did not work, and a PCI Ensoniq 1371 which produced
only loud static though it worked in another computer with the same
version of Puppy (2.6.21.17 kernel, 4.3.1). lsmod revealed that the
drivers for the VIA chip were still being loaded along with Ensoniq,
and the Crystal driver was NOT being loaded. Did not look for sb16.
Removed all the cards, left onboard sound disabled, rebooted
and the onboard sound worked, several boots in a row.

Onboard sound is still disabled - puppy must ignore that.
Or maybe it needed to be disabled to work?

Could someone add instructions to Setup that you don't need to run it
for sound unless your card is not automatically detected? Maybe running
it messed things up.