How I got laptop sound working in DSL

Forum: Laptops
Topic: How I got laptop sound working in DSL
started by: aramis

Posted by aramis on Jan. 13 2004,16:27

Broken sound seems to bit a bit of a theme with DSL. Mine was broken too, here's how I fixed it.

The main idea is to install sndconfig and then run that to configure your sound - I think it was about an extra 10-15megs of downloads by the time I was done.

so first get dpkg working with (stole this from cbaggers script, thx for that)
sudo dpkg-restore

then install synaptic ( not strictly necessary I think)
sudo apt-get install synaptic

Then install sndconfig with synaptic (a dpkg gui frontend); pretty straight forward

run sndconfig to get the settings for your sound card - you should know your chip set before you run this

sndconfig

finally run update-modules to "set" the files that sndconfig generates

sudo update-modules

Worked for me and my Toshiba 320cdt , your mileage may vary

Posted by fparri on Jan. 14 2004,21:05

Thanks man, that worked for me too

Posted by hawki on Jan. 15 2004,20:27

Compaq Armada 7370DMT

Sound modules do not load on startup. Checked with command lsmod. Since I had read elsewhere that SoundBlaster modules might be used on this laptop I tried modprobe to see.

sudo modprobe sb

Checked again with lsmod and saw that it did load the sb modules.

xmms now works fine.

Posted by markgamber on Jan. 17 2004,02:23

Excellent! I forgot all about sndconfig. I gave it a shot on these old Sony VAIO Pentium 200 machines and it found the Yamaha OPL3 hardware with a little prodding. Thanks!

Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Jan. 28 2004,04:20

I installed sndconfig, tried a few settings (my Compaq Armada 1592DT reportedly has an ESS 1678 chip, which isn't listed), didn't get any to work. Now when I run sndconfig and change settings, it says "Error writing to file"! Any ideas which file this is, how to fix it, or possibly even which settings would (should) work on my machine?

Thanks

Posted by Ekylypse on Jan. 28 2004,05:33

Try this in the terminal:

Code Sample

#: sudo sndconfig

the command sudo allows you to run a program as root.

Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Jan. 28 2004,06:10

I'm fairly sure I WAS using sudo - still got the file error. Figured if I could track down the file, maybe I could delete it and start again, check it's permissions, edit it by hand, whatever...

Posted by hawki on Jan. 30 2004,16:20

My Compaq Armada is a 7370DMT. sndconfig didn't like my system for some reason. The sound in mine is an ESS ES1878. It appears the support for most ESS chips is in the soundblaster module. I now load the module with modprobe.

sudo modprobe sb irq=5 dma=0 io=0x220

works great after that. You can determine other possible parameters using modinfo.

modinfo sb

That will give you all possible parms.

good luck

Posted by libretto on Feb. 13 2004,01:09

Tried updating the modules, now i cant modprobe the sound chipset anymore

(it did used to work)

Is it possible to undo the 'update-modules' command?

Posted by forty_caliber on Feb. 16 2004,02:47

Quote (aramis @ Jan. 13 2004,11:27)

Arimas,

Thanks for the post. This helped me get the sound workng on my HP OB 2000. The only difference is that I did not have to download synaptic to get sndconfig.

I just used # apt-get install sndconfig.

Thanks,

.40

Posted by SnakeEye on Mar. 11 2004,22:14

What were your settings for sound on the HP omnibook 2000?
I get a segmentationfault when using sndconfig. Does setting up the soundcard only work when installed on HD?

As soon as I have sound running I will ditch Mandrake 8.2 from it... DSL is much faster and the laptop far more usable...

Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Mar. 15 2004,12:58

Have tried numerous settings, still not having any luck with xmms. If I modprobe sb, I can hear the microphone input, but xmms just seems to kindof surge, like it's falling over itself, and I'm not getting any sound out of it at all. Tried the tone generator plugin as well, did the same thing.
Is there a seperate cd player prog in DSL that I could try, to see if the CD line at least works?

Posted by hasty on Mar. 15 2004,19:07

Theres a wonderful old command line cd player called workbone thats in the tradition of DSL.
Uses the num keyboard for commands but works really well.

I downloaded a copy recently using synaptic so apt-get should find it ok.

HTH

Posted by SnakeEye on Mar. 17 2004,20:21

Well, after installing on HD and dkpg-restore and apt-get install sndconfig I got sound working (more or less) With sndconfig a sample is played. However xmms is still complaining that my soundcards isn't installed...

DSL is detecting that sound should be working, as in the right corner of X a mixer is visible... But no sound with xmms :-(

Any idea's? *for the record, I'm trying to get sound working on a HP omnibook 2000ct....

Thanks,David

Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Mar. 18 2004,16:09

Ditto. I've now found that I can actually get CD sound to work (but I need to sudo xmms to play a CD, for some reason?), but trying to play mp3s or tones still doesn't work.
So I seem to be getting sound from lines, but not from digital?
Don't know if my packages are set up properly, I'm getting a heap of errors when trying to apt-get stuff (the occassional one works, others don't)

Posted by joker on June 07 2004,04:17

hawki Thanks... saved me alot of time and frustration for this newer linux supporter!!!!! modprobe worked great for my Compaq Armada 1500, only I hade to change dma=0 to dma=1.... Thanks again for taking the time to post your fix....:D

Posted by korgman2k4 on June 18 2004,19:25

Thanks aramis and forty_caliber!
I was able to get sound working on my Toshiba Terca 740CDT.
I had to tweak some BIOS settings and re-run sndconfig.

however, to access the CD drive I have to use sudo xmms, the dsl desktop icon for xmms doesn't work.

any idea on how to get around that problem. I would appreciate any suggesstions. Thanks!