[gentoo-user] No sound with Intel HDA card in Gateway m6888u laptop (2.6.30-r4, amd64)

[Jesse Taylor]

Hello --

I've been trying to get my sound working for nearly a month now with
no luck.

* I've followed the Gentoo ALSA Guide *several times*, and it's not
working for me.

* I've already unmuted my card in alsamixer and raised the volume to
100%

* There is no sound that is coming from any of the following:
   -- mplayer (movies or mp3's)
   -- speaker-test
   -- flash movies in Firefox
   -- etc ... i.e. NOTHING gives me any sound

* But when I try to play sound in any of the above mentioned programs,
I get no errors (i.e. they seem to think that my sound *is* working.

* I've checked to make sure that the volume isn't muted via the
keyboard, and that the volume is at 100% there too.

* There are no errors that are popping up in /var/log/messages or /var/
log/dmesg when I do '/etc/init.d/alsasound restart' nor when I
manually rmmod/modprobe the sound modules

* The hardware is not damaged/broken -- it works fine from Windows

* I've tried to disable ati-hdmi in the kernel and it doesn't make a
difference (it's currently enabled, but unused according to lspci -k)
and according to http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/ the ATI HDMI card should
be using snd-hda-intel (as it currently is) anyway

* I've tried telling alsaconf to use the Intel HDA card, and the ATI
HDMI card -- neither of these work.

* I started a thread on Gentoo Forums regarding this problem () and
someone said: <QUOTE> HD Audio often needs a model option passed to it
based on the codec see /usr/src/linux/Documentation/sound/alsa/HD-
Audio-Models.txt to see what the model should be. </QUOTE> ... But
looking through that file, I could not determine which option I should
use (if this is even a solution, anyway) for my card. Google was no
help here.  (note that the Intel HDA card uses the SigmaTel ID 76a0
codec)

Is there any additional information I can provide (besides what I just
mentioned, and the stuff below) to help diagnose this? Anything else I
should try? Any help would be *very* much appreciated.

Thanks,
Jesse Taylor

P.S.

Here's some info on the current state of things:

#####################
# cat /proc/asound/cards
#####################
 0 [Intel          ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel
                     HDA Intel at 0xf3300000 irq 22
 1 [HDMI           ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI HDMI
                     HDA ATI HDMI at 0xf3010000 irq 17

########
#lspci -k
########
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio
Controller (rev 04)
       Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
       Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel
01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc RV630/M76 audio device
[Radeon HD 2600 Series]
       Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
       Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

######################
# cat /proc/asound/devices
######################
0: [ 0]   : control
 1:        : sequencer
 16: [ 0- 0]: digital audio playback
 24: [ 0- 0]: digital audio capture
 32: [ 1]   : control
 33:        : timer

########
# codecs  (note that there are two codecs for card0 (is this normal?))
########

# the intel card
localhost ~ # cat /proc/asound/card0/codec#0
Codec: SigmaTel ID 76a0
Address: 0
Function Id: 0x1
Vendor Id: 0x838476a0
Subsystem Id: 0x107b0562
Revision Id: 0x100204

#the intel card again
localhost ~ # cat /proc/asound/card0/codec#1
Codec: Conexant ID 2c06
Address: 1
Function Id: 0x2
Vendor Id: 0x14f12c06
Subsystem Id: 0x14f10000
Revision Id: 0x100000
Modem Function Group: 0x2

# the ATI HDMI card
localhost ~ # cat /proc/asound/card1/codec#0
Codec: ATI ID aa01
Address: 0
Function Id: 0x1
Vendor Id: 0x1002aa01
Subsystem Id: 0x00aa0100
Revision Id: 0x100000
No Modem Function Group found


########
# lsmod
########
snd_seq_oss            31392  0
snd_seq_midi_event      7208  1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq                56672  4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device          7164  2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss            41184  0
snd_mixer_oss          16904  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_hrtimer             2840  0
snd_hda_codec_atihdmi     3944  1
snd_hda_intel          28296  0
snd_hda_codec          66152  2 snd_hda_codec_atihdmi,snd_hda_intel
snd_pcm                74640  3
snd_pcm_oss,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_timer              22264  3 snd_seq,snd_hrtimer,snd_pcm
snd                    65256  9
snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer
snd_page_alloc          9496  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm


#############
# Kernel config
#############

CONFIG_SND=m
CONFIG_SND_TIMER=m
CONFIG_SND_PCM=m
CONFIG_SND_JACK=y
CONFIG_SND_SEQUENCER=m
CONFIG_SND_OSSEMUL=y
CONFIG_SND_MIXER_OSS=m
CONFIG_SND_PCM_OSS=m
CONFIG_SND_PCM_OSS_PLUGINS=y
CONFIG_SND_SEQUENCER_OSS=y
CONFIG_SND_HRTIMER=m
CONFIG_SND_SEQ_HRTIMER_DEFAULT=y
CONFIG_SND_SUPPORT_OLD_API=y
CONFIG_SND_VMASTER=y
CONFIG_SND_PCI=y
CONFIG_SND_HDA_INTEL=m
# CONFIG_SND_HDA_HWDEP is not set
CONFIG_SND_HDA_INPUT_BEEP=y
CONFIG_SND_HDA_CODEC_ATIHDMI=y
# CONFIG_SND_HDA_CODEC_INTELHDMI is not set
CONFIG_SND_HDA_GENERIC=y
# CONFIG_SND_HDA_POWER_SAVE is not set

#########################
# cat /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf
#########################

alias /dev/mixer snd-mixer-oss
alias /dev/dsp snd-pcm-oss
alias /dev/midi snd-seq-oss
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel


Also, check out the output of the info script from the official ALSA
site:
http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=b741663fa1c69d5a5cfeabfa51086ba636c6aef5