Re: can someone please help me get this ausio chip working?

From: Clive Dove (chdove_at_rogers.com)
Date: 06/14/04 

Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 12:14:43 GMT

heavenbound wrote:

> Thanks for the respone. Here's the deal as clearly I think as i can
> make it.
>
> The AC97 cmedia is my other pc which has no linux on it. When I
> installed mandrake 10 i got a buzzing sound only. i did try mandrake
> 10 once. i also installed suse 9.1 and got no sound at all using the
> 9.1 suse live cd.
>
> my own pc has the sound blaster audigy. i installd mandrake 10 last
> night or something and it has working sound, just fine i think. i
> installed suse 9.1 via an ftp install 2 days ago, it had sound i think
> the first time i booted it after i installed it. then i swapped nic
> cards, put in another and since then got no audio at all. it
> recognized the sound blaster audigy platinum card in the control
> center and also i deleted it from there and reinstalled it. no sound
> still. so i put mandrake 10 and got sound fine.
>
> i want suse 9.1 on that pc but need the sound to work properly. i like
> it much nicer then mandrake for how good the GUI looks and how smooth
> all the fonts are and all that. i'm a GUI guy.
>
> anyway i really need to get the sound working properly in suse 9.1 on
> the pc which has the audigy platinum card.

OK, then for now we are working on system that is using an audigy card
in a pci slot and with a sound system that is working in Mandrake bur
not in SuSe.

I am assuming that SuSe has a similar kernal to Mandrake 10.

While still running Mandrake and while in your home directory, run this
command from a root prompt

lsmod -> modules.txt

This will give you a record of the modules installed. There will be a
lot of them for the sound card, but the alsa audigy modeule is
autoprobing and so when the boot process runs modprobe on snd-emu10k1
it fetches the rest of the modules. I Just want to see what will come
up once we do a standard install of suse and compare it to what you
have now.

You can also use the gui facility Mandrake Control Center which is in
your KDE menu as "Configure your Computer"
In it, click on Hardware, then again on Hardware then scan down to
Soundcard and the sub-menu entry will be the module that Mandrake
installed, Highlight it and you will see a list of particulars.
Click on the "Run config tool" button then hover your pointer over the
browse arrows at the end of the selection button beside Driver: and a
small list will pop up showing what Mandrake considers to be
alternative drivers for this card, In my system they are emu10k1,
audigy and snd-emu10k1 but yours may be different as you have a
different soundblaster version,

Then before re-installing SuSe, make sure that the on-board sound in the
bios has been disabled. While you are in the bios, make sure that "PNP
AWARE OS" (or whatever your bios calls it) is also disabled. This
feature is now a historical curiosity that has not been needed by
either system for some time but which manufacturers still seem to want
to leave enabled. The only current effect is to annoy the operating
system.

Re-install Suse and tell us what it chooses as a sound card module.
Run these commands and tell us the results

lspci | grep audio -i
grep sound /etc/modules.conf
lsmod | grep emu10k1 (from a root prompt)
lsmod | grep audigy (from a root prompt)

One of the above lsmod commands may result in a null return

If your system is using alsa, (which is the preferred one to use as it
will gradually replace the ossfree system as the default sound system)
then you should open KMix or another gui mixer window that lets you see
what channels are muted and what are not muted. and run your volume and
pcm sliders to max. Apparently that is needed in some systems to jump
start the sound system (I don't know why, but I did struggle with a
sound system for a while before trying it)

If you get interference sounds, you may have to start shutting down
channels one at a time to find out which channels are conflicting with
each other. In the most recent KMix version, note that the input
channels and the output channels are now on different pages in the
mixer window.

Some guesswork is at play here on my part. Hopefully some SuSe guru
will jump in.

Clive