Hi, all--
Well, I have this old Inspiron 3500/A400GT notebook (don't laugh! I just
can't afford a new computer). It's running the latest release of Arch
Linux, which provides a 2.6.18 kernel with ALSA modules installed by
default. I'm not sure of the driver version, but the ALSA library
version is 1.0.13. And ... no sound.
Here's what I know about the hardware: the audio card is a NeoMagic
256AV. According to lspci, the audio controller is:
Neomagic Corporation NM2200 [MagicMedia 256AV Audio] (rev 12)
The specs at dell.com say it's an NM3298, but maybe that's just the
audio portion of an NM2200.
HOWEVER:
I have had sound working on this machine at various times in the past,
but *never* using an nm256 module--either with OSS or ALSA. Under OSS I
think I used the sb16 module. If I remember right, when I started trying
to get ALSA working, I used the snd-sb16 module and was able to get some
sound, but only at very low volume. Finally a year or two ago I found a
web page that claimed some NeoMagic 256AVs actually use a CS42xx chip (I
forget which exact one, and that page seems to be gone now, but my
search today turned up some hints that it may be a CS4237B). Thus, the
recommended driver was one of the snd-cs42* series ... I think it was
cs4232 at that time. I tried that, and Hallelujah! It worked.
Cut to the present ... I brought the box out of retirement and installed
the latest Arch system, and now sound doesn't work again. I've tried
snd-cs4231, snd-cs4232, and snd-4236; in every case I get an error like:
FATAL: Error inserting $MODULE_NAME ($MODULE_PATH): No such device
I've tried it with no parameters, and with various combinations of IRQs,
ports, and dmas--there are many combinations I haven't tried, but
without knowing which if any of these modules *should* work, I'd rather
not take the time to try every possible variation.
Meanwhile, it seems I might get somewhere with snd-nm256. In the past
(up to maybe 6 months or a year ago), I could never load snd-nm256; at
least not without parameters; I always got an error message that
suggested using force_ac97--or was that the OSS nm256 module? I'm not
entirely sure. Either way, it didn't load, but on the few occasions I
tried force_ac97, it crashed the system.
Today, however, I get a different result. I can load snd-nm256 with no
parameters--but no sound card is detected. If I use
# modprobe snd-nm256 force_ac97=1
then the soundcard *is* detected, and I can adjust its settings with
amixer. But when I try to actually play a sound, e.g.
$ aplay foo.wav
I get this error:
aplay: pcm_write:1268: write error: Input/output error
So, where do I go from here? I'd appreciate any hints you may have.
P.S.: Yes, I *must* have sound on this box. I'm trying to learn the
ChucK audio programming language, and my desktop machine is in the
basement, where it's too cold to spend much time these days.
--
Matt Gushee
: Bantam - lightweight file manager : matt.gushee.net/software/bantam/ :
: RASCL's A Simple Configuration Language : matt.gushee.net/rascl/ :
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