Sound For Gateway 2000 Solo Model 9100 Not Working
Forum: Multimedia
Topic: Sound For Gateway 2000 Solo Model 9100 Not Working
started by: Old_Fogie
Posted by Old_Fogie on Feb. 28 2006,01:47
Hi all ! I'm a new user to DSL and I'm am totally impressed; this is truly fantastic.
I simply have no sound on this old laptop.....altho it runs DSL and openoffice fantastic
I think I'm pretty close to getting it; I see that others with various other Linux distributions claim to have success for this exact same laptop. However I just cannot seem to get it to work for me and was wondering if someone might be able to assist have input, etc.
Laptop Info:
Gateway 2000 Solo Model 9100
Chasis revision code: E2.1/CHPC
13.3 " Screen
66 MHz
2 Gig Hard Drive
160 MB Ram
Bios Revision is 8.16 (latest available for my chasis)
The sound system spec's (from Gateway's website for my serial number) are:
Yamaha YM715 and 704B:
16 bit stereo audio, 20 voice, four-operator FM music synthesis; full-duplex operation with two DMA channels, hardware wavetable synthesis
DVD audio: Dolby Digital certified, two channel playback
Volume control: Rotary hardware control on left side of unit. Rotating towards rear increases volume of internal speakers and speaker out connector.
Speakers: Stereo speakers built into palm-rest
Microphone: Omni-directional microphone in middle of plastic panel in front of keyboard
Connectors: Microphone, line in, line out, headphone out
MIDI in/out: Via game/MIDI port
I have Plug and Play OS turned off in the BIOS.
The bios settings for the sound are as follows:
On-board stereo sound - [Enabled]
I/O Address [220H-22FH]
MPU-401 I/O Address [330H-333H]
Interrupt: [IRQ 5]
DMA Channel [DMA CH0]
Wave 2 DMA [DMA CH1]
Joystick [Enabled]
I have tried to open terminal and run "alsaconf"
As soon as I do that I get (2) lines of error's
error 1: "cannot locate module snd"
error 2: "cat proc/asound/version: no such file or directory
But then the AlsaConfig program loads.
I've tried to use the sound for a Yamaha_OPL3-sa2/sa3 as from surfing the web others indicate that this driver works for them.
I dont need midi or joystick if that matters at all.
There are two options that I get asked in the Alsaconfig relating to the size in KB of the DMA . It apparently lets you use 4-64? But I don't have any idea for that so I was using 4.
I can get to the end of the Alsaconfig wizard. It then does some stuff in background and tries to load the alsa. And then it fails.
Now possibly? and i'm not sure. But maybe I did not download all the right stuff in aptget for alsa? There is so much and it is kind of confusing to me a newcomer to linux.
I do know that my cd rom drive is working. As when I open XMSS i can browse to my cd rom and select the .cda's and click play and the cd rom spins up. The XMSS by defaul is going with the OSS driver.
Even on the live CD i have no sound for whatever that is worth.
Thank you very much in advance for any help.
Posted by Old_Fogie on Mar. 03 2006,03:11
Well, I wound up getting the computer to do sound w/the 5.1 vector linux standard edition.Now I plan on dumping vector linux to try with the DSL. Not to trash the vector in anyway but my issues with the Vector is:
1. the gslapt crashes and i'm noob so i dont know how to run apt-get yet to do the updates.
Altho if I can't get the sound on DSL to work; i may have to learn RTFM a few thousand more times and query there forums everywhich way but loose.2. i have to run the network card wizard everytime i boot up to get the DHCP to run and talk to the router.
3. since i cant run "gsmacked" as i call it cuz i feel that the gslapt is smacking me by not letting me update. i cannot adjust the sound volume with asla as there's 2 files missing. but i do have sound.
My resolution to getting my sound working on vector was a hybrid of these two posts:
< http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthr....0+sound >
and
< http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthr....0+sound >
so basically i ran the 'sudo.....' line in terminal/console when i was not in Linux but at BASH i think they call it? which is in the first hyperlink there above. but i used the settings of the guy Pnut in second post. his numbers all matched what my BIOS (f2 on boot) showed. then i typed reboot and bang.
Also this pc was able to do sound with ubuntu's "dapper" cd...but the pc was almost useless due to the system requirements to run the "candyland" gui.
So I must assume? that I should be able to get it working on the DSL? I'll post my findings....let her rip!
Posted by Old_Fogie on Mar. 03 2006,07:27
ok so i dumped vector and installed DSL.booted up reformed hard drive with boot/live cd.
did not use frugal isntall; just "install to hd"
booted up no problems...except no sound.
opened dmix to confirm sliders moved up.
opened up xMMs.....tried to play cd...no luck. cd spins up light goes for the cd-rom drive. it's mounted. confirmed cd rom works in other pc. cd is good.
here is where i am confused:
i know that my onboard sound emulates the Yamaha opl3sa2.
i did find this file located in the following DSL installed pc.
/lib/modules/2.4.26/kernel/drivers/sound/opl3sa2.o
now i tried to run "alsaconf" and terminal just says it dont exist. which is what i'm thinking is wrong here. i don't think that alsa is even installed when you install from CD.
so I opened up "MyDSL" clicked on system button. i see there is an alsa there as an available download. however the comments are that it is for version 2.0 and 2.1 of DSL only.
so i figure ok. i gotta get alsa elsewhere. so i did the "Apps-Tools-Upgrade to GNU Utils" and then the "Enable APT" both of which downloaded a ton of stuff. I got no errors. Rebooted for good measures. Tried to get Alsa from there. I selected alsaconf 0.4.3b-4 and then it also selected a few other files by default and put them in. Again no errors. Terminal launched the Alsa config utility. I went thru it; again I dont know what those KB sizes are for w.r.t. the dma's but anywhere on boot i got "cannot located module snd" error. So alsa didnt load with the OS.
So in summary I believe the following is the end result:
1. DSL does NOT load alsa from fresh install from CD.
2. Don't use the alsa download from MyDSL. (even tho it gives bad checksum errors from teh ibilio.org site)
3. need to find which version of alsa is for this kernel version 2.4.26 and how to install.
I'm stuck...
Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 05 2006,06:13
Don't download the alsa.dsl file from the MyDSL repository.Instead, download the "alsadebs.dsl" file from the repository and follow the instructions in the INFO file.
Or you could just use the builtin OSS sound drivers and skip ALSA altogether, like this guy did with his Gateway Solo:
< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....t=10737 >