Sound on an Ultra 60

ggareau · n00b Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 2

I've enabled/installed the sound through the kernel, but I'm still not getting any audio at all.

It worked under suse, so it must work under gentoo, I'm just not sure how. Anybody know?

Mark Clegg · Posted: Sun May 30, 2004 8:44 am Post subject:

What kernel are you using?

2.6: - Alsa seems a bit iffy at the moment.

2.4: - Are you using the CS4231 driver? (I don't know what sound chipset is in the U60) - If so have a look at the audioctl program. - Theres lots of discussions about it in this forum if I remember rightly.

ggareau · n00b Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 2

Haven't tried 2.6 yet, but by the sounds of it I should avoid it anyway

And as for 2.4, I have played with audioctl, but I haven't gotten anywhere with it. I guess I'll search some more unless someone else has any pointers

EDIT: Ok, so it's actually only cds that arent working. Anyone know why that would happen? Yes the CD is connected to the sound card

moongoggles · Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2004 10:17 pm Post subject:

I've been screwing with this for a long time, years, I think, and I have yet to get the sound working correctly on either my U5 or my U10 under Linux - since 2.2.xx. They both have the cs4231 chip and both worked great with Solaris, this includes CD audio through the external speakers (driven by line-out). I've scoured these forums and googled until my eyes hurt. I know it's not just me or my boxen. There are a lot of posts on the net from several years ago until just recently that have people searching for answers yet not finding any - posts without replies. At the same time, there are posts saying "just modprobe audio cs4231 and it works great!" Ok, good for you. This doesn't work for me. It never has - not since the RH Sparc distro, the SuSE sparc distro, and now Gentoo. I haven't tried Debian or Mandrake on Sparc but I see the same distress calls on their mailing lists. I can fiddle with audioctl until I get something I don't really want to hear out of the built-in speaker but why can't I get it to come out of the line-out port? Why doesn't the CD audio make it to the speaker? Has all interest in resolving these problems gone away? I love running Gentoo on these machines but not having the audio working sometimes makes me want to go back to Solaris. For all the things I hate about Solaris, at least the sound worked.

Weeve · Retired Dev Joined: 30 Oct 2002 Posts: 641

Is it all audio that comes out of the speaker or just the CD audio?

In my experience, Ultra 5s don't often seem to come with a cable to link the internal CD audio cable to the sound card. And even if they do, there doesn't always seem to be the proper connector for it. I can get regular audio to go out the line out and headphones ports on both an Ultra 5 and Ultra 2 in the 2.4 series kernels, but I haven't tried CD audio.

moongoggles · Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2004 12:06 am Post subject:

When I was running Solaris, I could get all audio to come out whichever port I set it to. Under linux, all I can get is sound out of the internal speaker and then it is only by cat'ing some file to /dev/audio - no CD audio.

Here's something I've been wondering about: when I run aumix (or the gnome mixer, for that matter) the volume can only be set to min or max. Have you seen this?

Weeve · Retired Dev Joined: 30 Oct 2002 Posts: 641

I've seen that for the master volume control, but the mixers for the individual channels or lines seem to work ok (I normally only use PCM)

moongoggles · Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2004 12:29 am Post subject:

So, can you actually get the sound to come out of the line out port? Which machine are you on?

Weeve · Retired Dev Joined: 30 Oct 2002 Posts: 641

Ultra 5 or an Ultra 2. I use audioctl via the init script or by hand on the command line.

moongoggles · Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2004 7:15 pm Post subject:

Am I to assume the answer to first question?

Weeve · Retired Dev Joined: 30 Oct 2002 Posts: 641

Actually, I already answered in a previous post, but the answer is yes

moongoggles · Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2004 8:07 pm Post subject:

I know, I've read all the previous posts on this subject, I guess I just wanted to hear it again. If you say it works, then I won't give up.

Weeve · Retired Dev Joined: 30 Oct 2002 Posts: 641

Ahh, ok. Good luck