nm256 [was: ALSA: doc notes additions]

nm256 [was: ALSA: doc notes additions]

[Patrick Shirkey]

A person who unfortunately did not provide an email address has 
submitted this for the alsa-docs.

> I use this driver on a Dell Latitude CPi laptop.
> I confirm that the driver hangs 99% of the time when loaded normally.
> However I have found a way to raise chances to load correctly:
> 1: boot single-user
> 2: if you use journaling-less filesystems (such as ext2), remount
>    the big ones read-only to save you checking time in case of crash.
> 3: load the AC97 part of the driver:
>         modprobe snd-ac97-codec
> 4: start X11 (I personnally use XF86 4.2.0) typically using "startx"
>    and terminate the session immediately, to return to the console.
> 5: load the remaining part of the driver:
>         modprobe snd-nm256
> 6: if it doesn't crash, you can restore settings with
>    "alsactl restore", then remount your filesystems read-write,
>    then proceed with normal boot procedure (exit the single-user
>    shell).
> With this procedure I avoid crashing 25-33% of time (i.e. it crashes
> 2 or 3 times before it succeeds).  Hope this helps.
> 

This seems more like a bug than a quirk of the card. Is it worth adding 
it to the notes or can the problem be fixed?




-- 
Patrick Shirkey - Boost Hardware Ltd.
For the discerning hardware connoisseur
Http://www.boosthardware.com
Http://www.boosthardware.com/LAU/guide/
========================================



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Re: nm256 [was: ALSA: doc notes additions]

[Takashi Iwai]

At Mon, 02 Sep 2002 22:06:34 +0900,
Patrick Shirkey wrote:
> 
> A person who unfortunately did not provide an email address has 
> submitted this for the alsa-docs.
> 
> > I use this driver on a Dell Latitude CPi laptop.
> > I confirm that the driver hangs 99% of the time when loaded normally.
> > However I have found a way to raise chances to load correctly:
> > 1: boot single-user
> > 2: if you use journaling-less filesystems (such as ext2), remount
> >    the big ones read-only to save you checking time in case of crash.
> > 3: load the AC97 part of the driver:
> >         modprobe snd-ac97-codec
> > 4: start X11 (I personnally use XF86 4.2.0) typically using "startx"
> >    and terminate the session immediately, to return to the console.
> > 5: load the remaining part of the driver:
> >         modprobe snd-nm256
> > 6: if it doesn't crash, you can restore settings with
> >    "alsactl restore", then remount your filesystems read-write,
> >    then proceed with normal boot procedure (exit the single-user
> >    shell).
> > With this procedure I avoid crashing 25-33% of time (i.e. it crashes
> > 2 or 3 times before it succeeds).  Hope this helps.
> > 
> 
> This seems more like a bug than a quirk of the card. Is it worth adding 
> it to the notes or can the problem be fixed?

a newer version (rc3) should be more stabler than before, although it
still crashes sometimes.
as far as i investigated, the crash is involved with two things:

1. crash during probing the ac97 codec capability.

   touching ac97 registers soon after reset seems dangerous.
   this danger is lowered now but still might happen.

2. crash in chip_init().

   this seems to happen after some reboots.  crashes randomly.
   no idea what happens and how to avoid.


Takashi


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