AC97 sound hard for a Newbie

sulzla · 06-22-2003, 01:20 PM

Hello everyone,

Well I finally got my adsl connection working with redhat 9.0. Next step is to get my sound working. When I run the soundcard detection utility my soundcard is detected:

Vendor: VIA Technologies
Model: VT8233 AC97 Audio Controller
Module: via82cxxx_audio

But when I click play test sound I hear nothing. I have done some searching and many people seem to think alsa is the solution but it seems that this is beyond me being a 1 day old newbie. Anyway any help would be awesome. Thanks.

bigjohn · 06-22-2003, 09:14 PM

I had no end of snags getting an AC97 chip going. But eventually managed to sus it out, though since then I have changed it and now have a soundblaster live! 5.1 stuffed in a pci slot.

Anyway, have you tried searching for AC97??? the damn things get lotsa mentions.

The threads that they are mentioned in, often start with "have you tried opening a mixer - aumix, kmix or something like that?" because they are often "muted" by default during install.

Sorry, it isn't much, but at least it's a start!

regards

John

sulzla · 06-23-2003, 12:02 PM

Well I did get it working by using the pink microphone connector rather than the regular line out connector. This seems very strange to me and is annoying since I also boot windows and would need to change the cable back and forth appropriately. Do you have any idea why the output would come from the jack that is suppossed to be for the microphone?

bigjohn · 06-23-2003, 01:26 PM

what you on about sulzla? a sound blaster live! or AC97 onboard chip?

regards

John

sulzla · 06-23-2003, 04:29 PM

the ac97 on board chip

yangkuo · 06-24-2003, 02:57 AM

goto http://www.alsa-project.org

download the drivers package

follow instructions after u un-pack the contents of the download to compile and install the drivers.

it worked for me ...

sulzla · 06-24-2003, 08:12 AM

Allright I guess my best bet will be to attempt to install the Alsa drivers. Does this mean I should remove whatever driver the sound card is currently using? I have to admit that I'm still a bit confused about package management in Linux but I'm assuming the rpm -e commmand is used to remove packages.

bigjohn · 06-24-2003, 06:21 PM

presuming that you are running deadrat 9, then surely, you should have the alsa stuff as an rpm on your disc's.

That should be the easiest way to install it???

regards

John

yangkuo · 06-24-2003, 08:25 PM

you can go to

http://rpmfind.net
or
http://freshrpms.net

to search for redhat9 and other distro RPMs

yangkuo · 06-24-2003, 08:26 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by sulzla
Allright I guess my best bet will be to attempt to install the Alsa drivers. Does this mean I should remove whatever driver the sound card is currently using? I have to admit that I'm still a bit confused about package management in Linux but I'm assuming the rpm -e commmand is used to remove packages.

i did not do any un-install of the existing drivers ... i remember the 'Sound Card Detection' program actually 'recognized' my sound device but i did not get any sound !

i just proceeded with installing the ALSA drivers ...

sulzla · 06-25-2003, 06:48 AM

so once the alsa driver is installed, is the system ready to go? Are there any additional steps necessary to tell the system to actually use the driver?

yangkuo · 06-25-2003, 10:52 AM

for my case, there was no need ...

sulzla · 06-25-2003, 01:45 PM

how can you check which sound driver is being used?

yangkuo · 06-25-2003, 08:07 PM

i think mine still shows AC97 audio (what it originally was) ... but bfor i compiled and installed ALSA drivers there was no sound output ....

i believe even though ALSA drivers is in effect but they never name it as such ... probably it's like a different version of the similar driver (but provided by the ALSA project)