[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#561562: alsa-utils: No sound in Asus A6B entertainment notebook

[richard]

Package: alsa-utils
Version: 1.0.21-1
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch

This notebook will not produce sound 'out of the box' 
and needs tweaking of sound settings to perform. Some 
support either by default settings for alsa-mixer or 
by a README-Asus-A6 is essential to have an easy 
sound installation. 

Most of the guidance is available on the internet, but 
is time consuming to find. The relevant text found is as 
follows: 

"My notebook is possibly the most Linux-incompatible 
machine that's ever been made. Here's a tip: Don't buy 
an Asus A6R. It's one of the worst notebooks I've ever owned. 
Sound didn't work straight off. The notebook has an 
IXP SB400 AC'97 Audio Controller, according to Ubuntu's 
Device Manager. If you've got the same sound card, and 
want to get it working, you need to do two things. 
(1) Double-click the speaker icon in Ubuntu's system tray 
and click Edit -> Preferences in the Volume Control window 
that appears. In the list, look for the Master Surround 
entry, and put a checkbox in it. Then look for External 
Amplifier and put a check in it. Click the Close button 
then click the Switches tab in the Volume Control window. 
Remove the check against External Amplifier. 
(2) Then click the Playback tab and click the Speaker 
icon beneath the Master Surround slider, so that it's no 
longer muted. Then adjust the slider. Playback some audio 
and you should find everything now works. Basically, the 
Master Surround slider is now your volume slider. Weird, 
but true. To make the system tray applet use the Master 
Surround to control the volume, right-click the system 
tray speaker icon, select Preferences, and select 
Master Surround in the list. "

I'm running Gnome, so the instructions apply pretty much 
the same - except begin by clicking 
System>Preferences>sound>Preferences with 
ATI IXP (Alsa Mixer) selected as the device in the menu. 

The only thing I can add is that the box for 
Exchange Front/Surround: must be unchecked for the 
headphone jack to work. 

My Sound modules etc are as follows: 
# lspci | grep -i audio
00:14.5 Multimedia audio controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)

# lsmod | grep -i snd
snd_atiixp             13892  2 
snd_ac97_codec         91264  1 snd_atiixp
snd_pcsp                8416  0 
ac97_bus                1456  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm_oss            32232  0 
snd_mixer_oss          12368  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                62416  4 snd_atiixp,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcsp,snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_midi            5688  0 
snd_rawmidi            18596  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_midi_event      6212  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq                42304  2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_timer              17460  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device          6136  3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
snd                    49028  14 snd_atiixp,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcsp,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
soundcore               6184  1 snd
snd_page_alloc          8116  2 snd_atiixp,snd_pcm



-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.30-2-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages alsa-utils depends on:
ii  dialog                    1.1-20080819-1 Displays user-friendly dialog boxe
ii  libasound2                1.0.21a-1      shared library for ALSA applicatio
ii  libc6                     2.10.2-2       GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libncursesw5              5.7+20090803-2 shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  linux-sound-base          1.0.21+dfsg-2  base package for ALSA and OSS soun
ii  lsb-base                  3.2-23         Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  module-init-tools         3.11-1         tools for managing Linux kernel mo
ii  udev                      149-1          /dev/ and hotplug management daemo
ii  whiptail                  0.52.10-4.1    Displays user-friendly dialog boxe

Versions of packages alsa-utils recommends:
ii  alsa-base                  1.0.21+dfsg-2 ALSA driver configuration files
ii  pciutils                   1:3.1.4-4     Linux PCI Utilities

alsa-utils suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information