[Sound is lost] Z92r asus amd ati ixp sb4x0

[melodie]

Hello,

I have a friend who has a laptop Asus, model Z92R. After installing Bento to it, I had to add the Pulseaudio packages in order to get the sound to work, as with Alsa it seemed I couldn't get it to play.

lspci provides this information about the sound card:

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00:14.2 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] IXP SB4x0 High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
A few days later the friend using her machine tells me the sound was working, and then once she went to a part of the house where she needs wifi, the sound wouln't work anymore. I had her open alsamixer and unmute a channel which was muted, then "sudo alsactrl store" and the sound was there again. A pair of days later same thing. She is a newcomer with Linux, so I did a search for her. No way to find something in English or in French but I found a lead in the Italian forum:
http://forum.ubuntu-it.org/viewtopic.php?t=294544

Well I don't understand Italian, would you guess? I just saw that the identifier for the card has a slightly different number but the issue looks lot alike.

I found this link in the thread:
http://wiki.ubuntu-it.org/Hardware/Audio/IxpAti obviously also a wiki in Italian, so I went to see what it says and put the text into Google translate. https://translate.google.com/

It says if the machine comes with a chipset containing 2 parts using the same address and if...

Introduction

This guide contains instructions useful for installation of onboard sound produced by ATI.

Preparations

To identify the model of the sound card, type in a terminal window the following command:

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aplay -l
The result will be similar to the following:

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**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: IXP [ATI IXP], device 0: ATI IXP AC97 [ATI IXP AC97]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Sottoperiferica # 0: subdevice # 0
card 1: Modem [ATI IXP Modem], device 0: ATI IXP MC97 [ATI IXP MC97]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Sottoperiferica # 0: subdevice # 0
If Subdevices of the two cards have a separate address "0/1" and "1/1", consult with chipset different address.

As if Subdevices have the same address, see chipsets that use the same address.

Chipset with different address

To enable audio in this case, disable the dynamic control of the CPU and add the following driver modules to be loaded at startup and just open with a text editor with administrative privileges and the file / etc / rc.local by adding these lines before the line where it says exit 0:

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modprobe -r snd-atiixp-modem
modprobe -r snd-atiixp
modprobe snd-atiixp
Chipsets that use the same address

    Type in a terminal window the following command and note the type of sound card you posiede:

   

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asoundconf list
    To configure the sound card, type the following command:

   

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asoundconf set-default-card tiposcheda
    Replace the words "tiposcheda" with the pattern found with the previous command.

    Install the alsa-oss package, available from the official repositories of the universe component.

    Type in a terminal window the following command to access the sound card configuration:

   

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alsamixer
    Press the M key on the keyboard to activate (00) and off (MM) the highlighted option. Use the keyboard arrow keys to move between one channel and another, and to increase and decrease the volume. You must enable the PCM column. To make sure that you actually hear the sound coming from the speakers, you must disable the channel 'External'.

I suppose "tiposcheda" must mean "your card". I would not add stuff in rc.local, but I would gladly blacklist snd-atiixp-modem if we find one such driver loaded.

If we can solve this using the Italian wiki as a lead, it will be a nice addition to the tips and tricks, and especially to the wiki.

[melodie]

I am to put the hands into the machine again this evening. I think I have found the cause of the issue. Here is the

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$ aplay -l
aplay -l
**** Liste des Périphériques Matériels PLAYBACK ****
carte 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], périphérique 0: ALC660 Analog [ALC660 Analog]
  Sous-périphériques: 1/1
  Sous-périphérique #0: subdevice #0
carte 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], périphérique 6: Si3054 Modem [Si3054 Modem]
  Sous-périphériques: 1/1
  Sous-périphérique #0: subdevice #0
$



The Si3054 Modem and audio card ALC660 Analog obviously share the same address. So to speak, I don't know yet if there is a driver in the kernel for this Modem card, but I might successfully solve it by simply removing the package pppd installed for all versions of Bento, as they are supposed to fit the larger audience.

Here some clues about that:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1972737

the one person in that thread wants to use the card, and it seems that there is no native Linux driver for it, so the issue might come from the package pppd default installed.

One question would be, if just removing the ppp/pppd packages is enough to solve it, what about removing it for all versions of Bento? Not sure about that: some people elsewhere might need it?