Rene, Thank you for your help. When I broke out the manual to learn how to access the bios and run diagnostics, I discovered that there is a hardware speaker mute switch on the keyboard that I had not noticed before. Needless to say that fixed the problem! Evidently one of my kids toggled this switch in their own attempt to get sound working in the days after the upgrade to FC 7, before I attempted to configure the sound card (when sound obviously was not working). I am intrigued by your comments regarding the es18xx driver, specifically the fact that it may not be necessary to specify options anymore. When blundering with the speaker mute problem, I found that the driver would not load unless I passed at least "isapnp=0" along with it. Do you think this is all that should be needed now (i.e. I should be able to leave off i/o, irq, and dma assignments?) This would simplify things and protect against cases where the soundcard settings were changed (by the bios setup program, say). I am also curious about the best way to load the es18xx driver on boot. As far as I understand, ISA soundcards are no longer detected on boot by recent kernels. I get around this by inserting the command "modprobe snd-es18xx" in the rc.local script. Is this the preferred way of loading the driver, or is there a better way? Thanks for your help. ---Tom > On 29-11-07 20:16, Tom Lund wrote: > >> I have an old Compaq Armada 7400 notebook with an ESS 1879 AudioDrive >> ISA >> sound card. I had sound working correctly with Fedora core 4, but after >> a recent fresh install of Fedora core 7 I am left with a situation where >> sound can be heard only by plugging in headphones - the built-in >> speakers >> are silent. Getting alsa to work with ISA sound cards is a bit tricky >> since one needs to load kernel modules and supply the correct options >> for >> these. > > Well, actually, the ESS 1879 is an ISAPnP chip and the snd-es18xx driver > has > PnPBIOS support so it should be possible to get things to work without any > manual option supplying. > > In fact, due to this thread from a (fairly short) while ago: > > http://www.mail-archive.com/alsa-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/msg20179.html > > the ESS1879 ID was added to the driver meaning chances are good things > will > "just work" now. The driver with the added ID will have to make it your > machine first though (for any onlookers, yes, it's in ALSA HG, no it's not > in 2.6.23). > > Anyways.. that's not your current problem it seems. > >> Although I knew how to do this from my core 4 experiences, I blundered >> along loading and unloading modules, passing incorrect options, playing >> with the mixer settings, and generally messing things up in vain >> attempts >> to get sound working. At one point I discovered that sound was working >> fine through the headphone jack. I could adjust volume, balance, mute >> and unmute, play sounds, play CD's - basically everything works as long >> as I have headphones plugged in. When I remove them, I get absolutely no >> sound. > > These kinds of sense switches are unfortunately (well, for some > definitions > of "un" at least) completely out of control of the ALSA driver. These are > hardware, motherboard specific, things, only affeting teh signal patch > after > it has left the chip ALSA is so busily driving... > >> As a sanity check I booted the machine into Windows 98 and I found the >> same thing! - no sound from the speakers, only from the headphones. Now >> I am concerned that I might have damaged the sound card or the speakers >> in my ill-fated exploits with the kernel modules. Is this possible? > > Well, it's not totally _impossible_ I guess but it's still exceedingly > unlikely... > >> Is there any way to verify this? I also wonder if it is possible to set >> some sort of speaker mute switch that would hold even on reboot. Any >> ideas on how to diagnose or fix this problem? > > If the laptop stores the routing in its CMOS it's possible that it > restores > this over boots. Given that you also have windows on there, don't you have > some laptop specifics tools and/or restore disks, and/or whatever that may > allow you to either specifically do something to the sound output, or just > reset the machine to a totally clean state? (in fact, I'd try going into > its > BIOS and seeing what I can do there first as well). > >> In case it is of use, I am enclosing the logs from "soundcard >> detection". >> Thanks for any help you can provide. > > Well, it confirms at least that you indeed have the ESS1979 PnP ID that > was > (only) recently added meaning the first bit above applies. Other than that > though, the issue is out of ALSA's realm and specific to your laptop I'm > afraid meaning that this list isn't going to be very specifically helpful. > > Rene. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: The Future of Linux Business White Paper from Novell. 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