Dell 400SC Sound Card Problem

[rufous_swanson]

Is there anyone out there with a Dell 400SC that has successfully gotten sound working with Fedora Core 1? The speaker beeps for the system bell, but beyond that does nothing. Hooking speakers/headphone up to the audio jacks has the same results.

I have run sndconfig and selected the only choice for Intel. The sound card is part of the intel mother board.

I have read a little bit about ALSA, but am wondering first if there is an easy way to get it working or if ALSA is the best route to go.

TIA
Rufous

[Lindy]

I don't have a Dell, but...Do you happen to know what the audio chipset is? Many will do soundblaster emulation with varying degrees of success. Try running lsmod and post the output (yea I'm snatching at straws, but it might turn up a clue).

[Jman]

Did some research. Apparently the Dell 400SC comes with the Intel 875P chipset, which has AC '97 integrated audio. I have a HP Pavilion with something similar, and it autodetected the i810_audio module.

How to get this to work I don't know.

I assume we've checked the obvious? Volume not muted? Power to the speakers?

[rufous_swanson]

I have found some ALSA drivers at Intel's site and similar packages at Dell's site for RedHat 8 & 9, but nothing for Fedora (only Red Hat 9 is officially supported by Dell on the 400SC).

I am not familiar at all with ALSA so I need to do some reading up on it to understand what I need to do. I was just hoping there was an easy fix or something I was missing.

Here is the output from lsmod.... thanks for everyone's help.

# lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
loop 11512 3 (autoclean)
nls_iso8859-1 3516 2 (autoclean)
udf 94112 0 (autoclean)
i810_audio 27560 1 (autoclean)
ac97_codec 16744 0 (autoclean) [i810_audio]
soundcore 6468 2 (autoclean) [i810_audio]
parport_pc 18756 1 (autoclean)
lp 8580 0 (autoclean)
parport 37056 1 (autoclean) [parport_pc lp]
autofs 12084 0 (autoclean) (unused)
ipt_ttl 1144 1 (autoclean)
ipt_unclean 8056 2 (autoclean)
ipt_limit 1560 34 (autoclean)
ipt_state 1080 6 (autoclean)
iptable_filter 2444 1 (autoclean)
iptable_mangle 2776 0 (unused)
ipt_LOG 4248 1
ipt_MASQUERADE 2200 0 (unused)
ipt_TOS 1656 0 (unused)
ipt_REDIRECT 1400 0 (unused)
iptable_nat 21848 0 [ipt_MASQUERADE ipt_REDIRECT]
ipt_REJECT 4248 0 (unused)
ip_tables 15136 14 [ipt_ttl ipt_unclean ipt_limit ipt_state iptable_filter iptable_mangle ipt_LOG ipt_MASQUERADE ipt_TOS ipt_REDIRECT iptable_nat ipt_REJECT]
ip_conntrack_irc 3824 0 (unused)
ip_conntrack_ftp 4944 0 (unused)
ip_conntrack 28552 4 [ipt_state ipt_MASQUERADE ipt_REDIRECT iptable_nat ip_conntrack_irc ip_conntrack_ftp]
e1000 71232 1
floppy 57308 0 (autoclean)
sg 35436 0 (autoclean)
sr_mod 17400 0 (autoclean)
microcode 4188 0 (autoclean)
ide-scsi 12016 0
ide-cd 34432 1
cdrom 34592 0 [sr_mod ide-cd]
keybdev 2656 0 (unused)
hid 23908 0 (unused)
ehci-hcd 20008 0 (unused)
usb-uhci 26124 0 (unused)
usbcore 78752 1 [hid ehci-hcd usb-uhci]
mousedev 5268 1 (autoclean)
input 5888 0 (autoclean) [keybdev hid mousedev]
ext3 71716 4
jbd 51276 4 [ext3]
ata_piix 4808 0 (unused)
libata 34436 0 [ata_piix]
sd_mod 13388 0 (unused)
scsi_mod 110248 5 [sg sr_mod ide-scsi ata_piix libata sd_mod]

[Lindy]

>i810_audio 27560 1 (autoclean)
>ac97_codec 16744 0 (autoclean) [i810_audio]
>soundcore 6468 2 (autoclean) [i810_audio]


I did some poking around ,and ALSA should work with the i810. Point your browser to :
http://foolish.digitalinc.info/docs/alsa/ . You'll find a better explanation of how to install ALSA there than I could hope to give you.

[foolish]

Yep, I'm 97% certain your card will work with ALSA. Read my guide ( http://foolish.digitalinc.info/docs/alsa/ ) and if you get stuck let us know and we'll try to help you.

[rufous_swanson]

Thanks for the "foolish" advice and everyone's help!!! Rufous rocks again.

Here is how I got the sound card in my Dell 400sc to work. The motherboard is an Intel 875PBZ (AD1980 integrated audio). I am using the stock box from Dell with no modifications... well except that I am running Fedora Core 1 (which they consider an "unsupported" platform). They only support Red Hat 9. I tried messing with some ALSA drivers I found for RH9 at one of their asia download site, but got no where. The documentation was horrible and very sparse.

There is no regular sound out from the internal speaker. Also the stereo speaker out jack is the middle one of the three audio jacks on the back. There is no standard "headphones" icon as I am used to seeing.

I followed the steps for the alsa setup at http://foolish.digitalinc.info/docs/alsa/ It was an excellent, clear guide.

The one problem I had was when going to alsa-project.org to get the right parameters for modules.conf as suggested by http://foolish.digitalinc.info/docs/alsa/ in the setup guide.

At the alsa-project pages the "details" page for the Intel i810 takes you to the 820 page. I guessed around at the URL and finally found it at http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/template.php?company=Intel&card=i810&chip=i810&module=intel8x0

Executive Summary... Read these pages :-)
http://foolish.digitalinc.info/docs/alsa/
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/template.php?company=Intel&card=i810&chip=i810&module=intel8x0

[mhelios]

Glad sound is working.
Please remember to click the "RESOLVED" button when your problem is fixed.
It is next to the "THREAD" and "REPLY" buttons at the bottom and top of threads.

[taty]

Thanks for the "foolish" advice and everyone's help!!! Rufous rocks again.

Here is how I got the sound card in my Dell 400sc to work. The motherboard is an Intel 875PBZ (AD1980 integrated audio). I am using the stock box from Dell with no modifications... well except that I am running Fedora Core 1 (which they consider an "unsupported" platform). They only support Red Hat 9. I tried messing with some ALSA drivers I found for RH9 at one of their asia download site, but got no where. The documentation was horrible and very sparse.

There is no regular sound out from the internal speaker. Also the stereo speaker out jack is the middle one of the three audio jacks on the back. There is no standard "headphones" icon as I am used to seeing.

I followed the steps for the alsa setup at http://foolish.digitalinc.info/docs/alsa/ It was an excellent, clear guide.

The one problem I had was when going to alsa-project.org to get the right parameters for modules.conf as suggested by http://foolish.digitalinc.info/docs/alsa/ in the setup guide.

At the alsa-project pages the "details" page for the Intel i810 takes you to the 820 page. I guessed around at the URL and finally found it at http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/template.php?company=Intel&card=i810&chip=i810&module=intel8x0

Executive Summary... Read these pages :-)
http://foolish.digitalinc.info/docs/alsa/
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/template.php?company=Intel&card=i810&chip=i810&module=intel8x0
Hi, I'm having exactly the same problem with the 400SC integrated sound card on Fedora
Core 1, as described in this thread earlier. However, when I tried to follow the comments from the previous post, it didnt' go quite smoothly for me. After I install all the alsa packages (including the non -Dell
specific driver), I did the following command:

/sbin/modprobe snd-intel8x0; /sbin/modprobe snd-pcm-oss;
/sbin/modprobe snd-mixer-oss; /sbin/modprobe snd-seq-oss

but I saw the following error in the syslog:

Sep 20 01:19:04 x1-6-00-0c-f1-91-98-5d kernel: Intel ICH soundcard not
found or device busy
Sep 20 01:19:04 x1-6-00-0c-f1-91-98-5d insmod:
/lib/modules/2.4.22-1.2115.nptl/kernel/sound/snd-intel8x0.o:
init_module: No such device
Sep 20 01:19:04 x1-6-00-0c-f1-91-98-5d insmod: Hint: insmod errors can
be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ
parameters. You may find more information in syslog or the
output from dmesg
Sep 20 01:19:04 x1-6-00-0c-f1-91-98-5d insmod:
/lib/modules/2.4.22-1.2115.nptl/kernel/sound/snd-intel8x0.o: insmod
snd-card-0

Do I have a more basic problem with the device rather than the driver? Having said that, sndconfig could detect it and my Windows dual-boot is using it fine though. Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[rufous_swanson]

I can't remember any more what I did with Core 1. I moved on to Fedora Core 2 -- which I highly recommend and there sound just works out of the box! No messing around with alsa or anything.

I think I just rebooted the box to make sure that the modules loaded correclty from scratch. And as you've probably read elsewhere the volume setting in alsa mixer defaults to off so you have to increase the volume.

If you don't want to upgrade twice I'd recommend waiting for Fedora Core 3 to GA and then install it. It is just as solid as Core 2 and runs great on the 400sc. I think you'll find the performance to be better than Core 1 too!