Re: HELP: Cannot get ALSA working on via82xx

[Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>]

At Thu, 15 Jul 2004 12:08:47 -0400,
Timothy Miller wrote:
> 
> Thank you for responding!
> 
> 
> Takashi Iwai wrote:
> > At Wed, 07 Jul 2004 14:26:54 -0400,
> > Timothy Miller wrote:
> > 
> >>I must once again reiterate my begging for help on this topic.  I've 
> >>gotten lots of help on the gentoo forum, but none of it's fixed my 
> >>problems, and I've only gotten one response on LKML.
> >>
> >>*BEG* *BEG* *BEG*
> >>
> >>Please, won't someone take pity on me?  :)  Thanks!
> > 
> > 
> > via82xx doesn't support MPU401 by itslef although via686 does.
> 
> I'm not sure if I have via686 or not.  Various tools like lspci don't 
> seem to reveal much.
 
Hmm, lspci must show the string like 'VIA86C686A' or 'VIA8235' ('VIA'
can be 'VT').

> That's one of the problems I keep running into with Linux.  There aren't 
> good tools for finding out what you have, and even when you do find out 
> what you have, it's hard to figure out which modules you need, because 
> the module names don't correspond well with the chipset name. 

You can use alsaconf script.  It will detect the right module.

> Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be a good way to relate module names 
> with menuconfig entries.  When someone says to use xyz module, I can't 
> figure out which menuconfig option to select, so I have to compile ALL 
> of them as modules, and when someone tells me to use a given menu 
> option, I can't figure out which module corresponds to it.

That's true.  The sure way would be to retrieve the pci id table from
the source code...

> > You can try snd-mpu401 module instead.  
> 
> Well, I have a module snd-mpu401, but when I modprobe it, I get an error 
> about a non-existant device.

Then you might need to give the correct port number and the irq
number as module parameters.  Perhaps you can get them from BIOS.


>  > When ACPI is enabled, the
> > configuration will be done automatically.
> > The midi device can be available as the second card.
> 
> Ah, well, I had nightmares trying to use ACPI.  I use just APM for 
> things like power-off (power-off works with APM, but not with ACPI). 
> Maybe some of the experts can help me to figure out how to get it all to 
> work.
> 
> I'm about ready to give up on ALSA and go back to OSS.  Maybe someone 
> can help me to figure out how to get MIDI sequencing to work with OSS 
> instead.  OSS would at least do audio right without noise and popping 
> sounds, etc.

I guess you see a kernel message when you load snd-via8xx driver
regarding dxs_support option (suppose that your chip is VIA823x)?

In worst case, you can eliminate the  noises with dxs_support=2
option.


> I apologize for the impatient nature of this post... I've been 
> struggling for weeks to get audio working right with ALSA, but every 
> piece of advise I get seems only to make things worse.
> 
>  From what I read on various web sites, ALSA for via82xx is so buggy 
> that it's really not worth using yet.

Sorry, no, the chipset on many mobos is so buggy :)
That's why we need so many workarounds.

OSS driver has no problem regarding clicking noises because it doesn't
support the DXS channels, the multiple playback.  ALSA supports it as
default.  dxs_support=2 options disables it.
See ALSA-Configuration.txt for details.

Anyway, OSS VIA driver also doesn't support MIDI for VIA823x.
It's for VIA686 only, as well as on ALSA driver.


Takashi