Sound card disappeared...

xavier10 · Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 8:42 pm Post subject: Sound card disappeared...

I have an AlBook 15" 1.25 GHz early 2004.

The sound used to work fine.
One day I tried to play an mp3 with xmms and it was played 20 % faster than normal; I tried to reemerge a bunch of sound packages (I did not add anything new; I just re-emerged things I suspected that could have been messed up. Eventually, I broke the sound completely again (do not know why).

And now, I am trying to get it back, but lspci does not find the audio anymore (see below). I am very desperate with this. I do not seem to see how to get this running again.... Please, help.

JoseJX · Retired Dev Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2774

I'd guess that you're using modules for sound and they're not being loaded but you haven't really given enough information. Do you have alsa-driver installed?

The ALSA playing too fast issue has been posted here a number of times, basically, you need to either use OSS for output or play with the buffer and period (In the XMMS ALSA Driver configuration under Advanced Settings) until it works for you.
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xavier10 · Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2005 5:47 pm Post subject:

I assume I have the ALSA in the kernel.
As far as the modules go:

xavier10 · Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2005 6:40 pm Post subject:

In my previous message, I forgot to say that the fact that some modules would be missing does not explain why my sound card is not listed by lspci anymore. It should be whether properly activated or not.

JoseJX · Retired Dev Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2774

Apple sound cards are connected through an I2C bus and don't show up in lspci.
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JoseJX · Retired Dev Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2774

First, does /dev/dsp exist?
How about /dev/mixer?
Can you describe what happens when you play a sound (what is not working)?
Are you running kde (arts)?
Or gnome (esd)?
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xavier10 · Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2005 7:05 pm Post subject:

I have experienced recent problems with /dev/dsp recently. It turned into a directory, which I do not understand:

xavier10 · Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2005 8:07 pm Post subject:

I decided to compile snd-powemac in the kernel.
I proceded with the howto http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/alsa-guide.xml

And now it is worse:

xavier10 · Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2005 8:45 pm Post subject:

I upgraded to a vanilla-2.6.12. The sound is still ko. Alsa now complains it does not find some snd-powermac module, which is now compiled inside the kernel. Oh, and now the system hangs when I try to halt it before leaving kde

In case someone could help me/tell me what module to load/give me any valuable information, I include below my .config, my emerge info and my modules/autoload and my alsa.conf.

sktrdie · Apprentice Joined: 13 Mar 2005 Posts: 153

try adding this file ".asoundrc" to your home dir:

xavier10 · Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2005 10:04 pm Post subject:

sktrdie · Apprentice Joined: 13 Mar 2005 Posts: 153

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-ppc-faq.xml
read the alsa on here, follow it correctly.
Note: Please make sure that PowerMac DMA sound support is turned off, otherwise the ALSA module will not be able to load.

after that, if the sound is still 20% fast just copy the file i gave u b4 to ur home as .asoundrc

and about the kernel are u doing everything correctly? remember to ybin -v after changin the yaboot.conf file.

xavier10 · Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2005 10:31 pm Post subject:

I forgot to remove the PowerMac DMA off and this allowed me to get the sound back. In fact I got it working right before I saw your post, but I thank you very much for pointing this to me.

Still, I do not understand why /dev/dsp is an empty directory. I do not understand why no audio shows up in my lspci or dmesg outputs. These are major questions for me. I like to understand the problems at least as much as I like to see the things working.

I have put your .asoundrc file into my home directory. It brought everything back to normal speed. Only issue I remark is that xmms sometimes stop reading .mp3 and waits for me to ask it to go on again, but this is not a major issue... Thanks again.

As far as the ybin -v is concerned, I have to say that it worked only once for me. When I run it again it does not modify anything and in the end I just edit some symbolic links in my /boot/ directory. Here is another thing I would like to understand in order to be happy.

Regards,

JoseJX · Retired Dev Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2774

The problem with HIGHMEM been posted a few times here in the forums, there is a problem with the toolchain and either HIGHMEM must be disabled on the kernel or you can upgrade to the unstable binutils (2.16) which should be safe to do at this time.

You didn't read my post above which says that the audio devices will not appear in lspci because they are connected to the PCI bus through the I2C bus. Hence, only the I2C bus will show and not the sound card.

As for the /dev/dsp issue, make sure you have either udev or devfs, not both. I'm not sure what else might give you that behaviour.

As for ybin -v, you only need to run it when you change /etc/yaboot.conf. It only writes your configuration file to the bootstrap partition.
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xavier10 · Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2005 7:39 am Post subject:

JoseJX,

I was not aware about the solution you mention for fixing the HIGHMEM problem. Thanks for pointing this out, I will investigate in the direction you mention (it is a little less urgent now, since I have a kernel running, which seems more or less stable).

I indeed missed your answer about I2C; sorry for that. This plainly explains one of the problems. Thank you.

I checked I am using devfs; udev is not installed:

JoseJX · Retired Dev Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2774

Well, Gentoo has been switching from devfs to udev as devfs isn't being supported upstream. It isn't that hard to switch: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Migrate_to_UDEV if you're interested in trying it. It could resolve your dsp issue. Just be aware that some device locations may have changed between udev and devfs, One of the changes that always seems to trip people up is that /dev/mouse moved to /dev/input/mice.

Good luck.
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xavier10 · Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 9:59 am Post subject:

Well, it seems that a migration should be in the way very soon (I have seen people reporting devfs "being crap" on other forums).
Thanks for the advice