ALSA not working with ASUS P4PE

userzero · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 5 Location: California

Hi, I've been trying to coax audio out of the integrated audio chip on my P4PE motherboard...without success. I've attempted to use the ALSA 'intel8x0' driver for it since it's an Analog Devices AC'97 chip, and that's the driver the ALSA Soundcard Matrix suggests. Am I attempting to use the wrong driver? I know the AC'97 chip works because I can get sound in Windows. I've followed the ALSA Guide all the way through, and the drivers appear to load correctly (no error messages, I get the appropriate devices under /dev), but still there isn't any sound coming out of my speakers. I guess what I'm really wondering is if anybody else with an ASUS P4PE has been able to get ANY sound output within Linux.

I'll probably just end up buying a Soundblaster since I've noticed the quality of the integrated audio varies with CPU load under Windows (even when just playing a CD). Well, thank you for any help.

pilla · Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2003 11:32 pm Post subject:

ALSA sound is mute by default. You have to increase master and PCM at least to get some sound

EDIT See also this thread.
_________________
"I'm just very selective about the reality I choose to accept." -- Calvin

userzero · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 5 Location: California

I performed every step in the ALSA Guide, including setting Master and PCM levels to 100 and to unmute them. I also used alsamixer to make sure the volume levels for everything was set to max. I also turned up the volume on my amp to 'bleeding-ear' level, and still nothing. I've also tried looking on the ASUS webpage, but they offer little help for setting up under Linux.

On my previous system, I had ALSA working fine with a Creative Soundblaster AWE32 PNP (this was prior to using Gentoo, and it still worked once I switched over to Gentoo from LFS). I just can't get the current setup to work. I'd plug in the old SB AWE32, but it's an ISA card, and my new system has abandoned their kind.

pilla · Posted: Fri Feb 07, 2003 1:25 am Post subject:

Could you post the output of lsmod? Maybe we can extract some info from there

_________________
"I'm just very selective about the reality I choose to accept." -- Calvin

userzero · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 5 Location: California

Okay, here's the output from lsmod once I fire KDE up:

snd-pcm-oss 39620 0 (autoclean)
snd-mixer-oss 13880 1 (autoclean) [snd-pcm-oss]
ide-cd 32524 0 (autoclean)
sr_mod 15448 0 (autoclean) (unused)
ide-scsi 8976 0
scsi_mod 93236 2 (autoclean) [sr_mod ide-scsi]
cdrom 32096 0 (autoclean) [ide-cd sr_mod]
agpgart 18864 3 (autoclean)
nvidia 1469408 10 (autoclean)
serial 54500 0 (autoclean)
snd-intel8x0 19492 1
snd-pcm 63488 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-intel8x0]
snd-timer 11784 0 [snd-pcm]
snd-ac97-codec 33480 0 [snd-intel8x0]
snd-mpu401-uart 3456 0 [snd-intel8x0]
snd-rawmidi 14688 0 [snd-mpu401-uart]
snd-seq-device 4384 0 [snd-rawmidi]
snd 33740 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-intel8x0 snd-pcm snd-timer snd-ac97-codec snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device]
soundcore 4196 4 [snd]
rtc 7548 0 (autoclean)
usbcore 47424 0 (unused)
ne2k-pci 5856 1
8390 7040 0 [ne2k-pci]

Running 'cat /proc/pci | grep audio' reveals:

Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Audio (rev 2).

So, I think the kernel knows what hardware is there. I've looked through the system logs, but no error messages pertaining to sound or audio show up. However, dmesg does show that there is a resource conflict:

ICH4: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev f9
PCI: Device 00:1f.1 not available because of resource collisions
PCI: Found IRQ 9 for device 00:1f.1
PCI: Sharing IRQ 9 with 00:1d.2
ICH4: BIOS setup was incomplete.
ICH4: chipset revision 2
ICH4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later

Okay, so device 00:1f.1 is the IDE interface, and 00:1d.2 is the USB Controller for hub #3. I can access my IDE disks, so I guess the conflict is resolved successfully. However, the next device listed by lspci is 00:1f.5, Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Audio (rev 02). Is this device not being initialized because of the resource collisions? It seems Linux knows the device exists. I'll see if I can manually set the device resources in BIOS setup, maybe that will prevent a collision?

userzero · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 5 Location: California

I tweaked around in my BIOS setup, but many of the choices for settings are either "Auto" or "Disabled". But powering up this time revealed an interesting message:

PCI: Enabled device 00:1f.5 (0004 -> 0007)
PCI: Assigned IRQ 11 for device 00:1f.5
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:1f.5 to 64
ALSA ../../alsa-kernel/pci/ac97/ac97_codec.c:1925: AC'97 0:0 analog subsections not ready
intel8x0: clocking to 48000

I hadn't received this message before, so I guess I'm one step closer. I'm not exactly certain how to read this error, but I'll snoop around the ALSA webpage for some clues.

pilla · Posted: Fri Feb 07, 2003 2:33 pm Post subject:

Some chipsets for Pentium 4 do not go well with i8x0. Try a newer kernel, like ac-sources. I think it is fixed there.

[EDIT] See it here.
_________________
"I'm just very selective about the reality I choose to accept." -- Calvin

oisch · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 17 Jul 2002 Posts: 130

I have the same problem with the P4PE's onboard sound chip.
I've heard of some people who got it working with the alsa drivers rc7 when they use the microphone plug instead of the line out plug!

Nevertheless I couldn't get it to work. Everything that could bring me a step forward would be quite helpful :wink:

userzero · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 5 Location: California

I stumbled across a solution while messing around with Mandrake. I had read many posts where users had been able to plug into Mic rather than Speaker with success. Doing this under Gentoo with my setup didn't produce the same results. So, I tried out Mandrake to see what was different there. The installer automatically detected the integrated audio and setup the modules appropriately on boot. Doing an 'lsmod' showed a mysterious 'i810_audio' loaded in memory. I popped in a CD to test the whole "plug into Mic" theory, and yeah that works. Back in Gentoo, rebuilding my LAST kernel (well, adding splash was really my last one), I enabled the following items:

Note: You probably need an experimental branch of the kernel sources (like ac-sources); I'm not sure if this module is in vanilla-sources or gentoo-sources.

Sound -->
<M> Sound card support
<M> Intel ICH (i8xx), SiS 7012, NVidia nForce Audio or AMD 768/811x
<M> OSS sound modules

Stick 'sound' and 'i810_audio' in /etc/modules.autoload, reboot, and finally SOUND! Of course, I've noticed some drawbacks to this setup:

* if you dual boot Windows, you need to move the plug to your speakers back to Speaker (not something I would want to do too often for fear of damaging that jack)
* using software to increase PCM volume results in annoying scratchies if raised to too high of a level
* booting your system doesn't feel clean (since you can't use that snazzy alsasound boot script)

It works, and as long as nothing you need relies on ALSA, you're fine: CDs play, Quakeforge grunts, and DVDs have nicely synced audio. I still plan on buying a Soundblaster Live when possible since it seems to have better support.

Oh yeah, I'd like to thank Bloody Bastard for turning me to sys-kernel/ac-sources to begin with; it's a fairly stable kernel with some of the fun of 2.5.

oisch · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 17 Jul 2002 Posts: 130

thanks! that was very helpful. I noticed the same thing some time ago, when I was testing knoppix. It detected my soundcard automatically and loaded the same module you mentioned.
Nevertheless it is not a perfect solution. Alsa seems to be the future of sound in linux and I believe they are doing a very good job. I'm quite sure that they will support this audio chip in the near future.

rmsds · n00b Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 10

I have an P4PE and sound worked OK with me from day one... The only problem I have is that master volume slider doesn't appear to do anything. I think that the mic in "bug" is because this mobo has support for 5.1 output, but that implies losing all inputs (at least at the back of the case) to be able to output the 5+1 (=2x3) channels. That means that the I/O is reconfigurable, maybe there is something wrong with the driver you are using. Here I use the same output.

oisch · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 17 Jul 2002 Posts: 130

I emerged the newest alsa drivers and already got it working by unmuting all sound sources. Nevertheless the Master Volume slider doesn't do anything for me, too.
The interesting thing when switching from the kernel driver to alsa was the performance difference!
I used mencoder to grab the output of my tv card and encode it to divx. With the kernel modules I had sound delay and massive lags in the file. With alsa: no problems.
I really like alsa