Sound problems on Sony VAIO VGN-BX740 laptop with Realtek
 

Friends,

I regularly refurbish donated laptops, load them with Linux and give them away to underprivileged students. It's a very fun, satisfying charity project of mine. Occasionally I come a "problem child" machine that's challenging to get fully working, as is the case here. Need some help sleuthing this out.

This is a Sony VAIO VGN-BX740 with a Realtek ALC262 chipset (also known as HDA Intel).

I have tried a variety of distros on this, all with the same result. I have also tried installing the "newest" Realtek Linux drivers but could never get them to compile properly. Right now I'm trying LXDE, which is an Ubuntu offshoot.

I can get sound through the headphone jack, but not through the speakers. All levels in Alsamixer are turned up and there's no hardware volume knob on this machine that might've been turned down.

I have searched the internet for solutions. Although there are plenty of forum posts on sound problems with Sony laptops, none of them has worked.

I am beginning to wonder if this might be a hardware problem with the headphone jack: even with no phones plugged into the headphone jack, Pulse Audio Volume Control shows the Headphone port as "plugged in" and the speakers as "Unavailable."

Your thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

Sounds like hardware if the phones work. Bear in mind that many laptops turn OFF speakers if something is plugged into phones. Otherwise /proc/asound/ might shine some light on the hardware as interpreted by the driver. Not likely, but the speakers could be hardware other than hw:0,0. Much like HDMI audio is often hw:0,3. But I suspect hardware. If the laptop has been refurbed, the speakers could be disconnected internally.

Shadow_7,

Thanks a lot for the response!

There's a lot of folders and subfolders inside /proc/asound/. Any ideas what I'd be looking for in there? Thanks.

The various info ones.

$ cat /proc/asound/cards

$ ls -l /proc/asound/card0/

The ones that end in "p" are for playback, ends with "c" for capture.

$ cat /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/info
card: 0
device: 0
...

Would be hw:0,0

Some of the others are only informative when in use. Like bitrate, buffers, periods, and such. Mostly looking for options for other outputs like hw:1. There's a few Dell models that have special hardware with options only available in alsamixer. Or at least that was the case back then. Make sure all the things are not muted and with levels in alsamixer, but I suspect a hardware issue which would need a hardware resolution. Hardware is OS agnostic, so any other OS would have the same issues. Older things also had oddities where the dialup modem was hardwired to the soundcard and could be an output that might get used by default without configuration steps to override the default. But again probably not your issue since the headphones work. It's more likely that the laptop was opened and the speakers disconnected, or physical damage from liquids or 2yo's.

$ egrep -r -i hdmi /proc/asound/*
$ egrep -r -i capture /proc/asound/*

pcm3p would be hw:0,3 and hdmi (most likely)

pcm2c would be hw:0,2 and the capture device name (most likely)

With various other paths in there based on the ID name.

$ cat /proc/asound/card0/id

None which will resolve a hardware issue. Just neat to know and understand from a certain point of view.

Thanks very much for the detailed response. I'll poke around in those config files when I have a moment. Thanks again.