alsa problems, please help

For some reason I can't get alsa to work correctly. I have tried with both the slackware ALSA (slackware 9.1) and compiling the 2.6 kernel with built in alsa. I have a toshiba laptop 5105-S501 with acpi enabled in both kernels. The chipset is i810 or for some reason it is listed as yamaha something or other some other places (this shouldn't be the problem since i had it working with kernel 2.5.59). I enabled both. I have unmuted the alsa using alsamixer and I do get some sound ie the file starts playing. This should mean the card is recognized and somewhat working. The problem is it just starts then stops on a note and it continues playing that note (continous sound) and spikes my CPU. I would appreciate any kind of help.

Did you resolve this problem? I am currently having the same here... Not quite sure what to do..

Basically, pretty much the same laptop, mine is a toshiba satellit 5000-104 and exactly the same problem described here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...=toshiba+sound
Any help much appreciated!

The same problem is happening on my laptop. It's a Toshiba Satellite 5105-S501, running Slackware 9.1 with kernel 2.4.22 and ALSA 0.9.6. It also has an i810 (although its specs say it's a Yamaha AC97 controller). This problem didn't happen on Slackware 9.0 with kernel 2.4.20 and no ALSA, though.

did yoy try alsa mixer and remove the m key

did yoy try "alsa mixer" command and remove the m key

Well, GerbilSoft, I think you are not going to like my answer! I have sorted my problem but I haven't got a clue how!

From the start as I don't know how much you tried to make it work. You need to download kernel source, patch the kernel with the acpi patch from http://acpi.sourceforge.net/ (the default acpi support is NOT good enough for toshiba laptops) and recompile. You can get rid of most options in the "Sound" section when recompiling apart from Sound support (obviously) and i810 as well as Yamaha AC97 as modules.

If you don't know what I am talking about here. Let me know, more details will follow. If you already tried all that, sorry to labour the point..

Then you just need to reboot in your new kernel install the latest alsa-driver by usual (./configure && make && make install) then run alsaconf.

Ok, all that is the theory. In practice however, it seems to work but then when you try to play a sound, you got sporadic sound and it spikes your cpu...

This is what I have banged my head on for about 2 weeks! Then i thought, I might try the latest kernel version 2.6-test8 at the time. I simply couldn't get it to work! Obviously too optimist.
However, when I came back to kernel 2.4.22 and did again everything as mentionned above, it worked. Now I have got sound though I suspect the quality is not perfect...

My theory is that there are issues with irq allocation.

I am sorry i can't give you more informative details on how to fix it as I don't know how I did it...
L

It didn't work.

I assume it has something to do with Kernel 2.4.22, as it worked correctly with Kernel 2.4.20 (without ALSA). (Kernel 2.4.22 doesn't work correctly for sound with or without ALSA, though.)

I hope I could help further. Really don't know how I got it to work... Sorry!
L

Hi Guys,

i also had this problem with my Satellite Pro 4600...it uses the same soundcard like your laptops....the solution for me was very easy...since i use ACPI i recognized some strange IRQ-conflict messages when the system boots (kernel boot). So i just followed the solution that was provided on screen before the acpi interpreter starts up..."try to add pci=noacpi to your boot configuration"...i did that and since then all my sound probs are gone.

Maybe this could help you guys too.

cu,
Gonzolo2k

I have tried several things including passing pci=noacpi to the kernel and still nothing works. I even tried installing the alsa from the development site since the one in the kernel is not exactly the newest version. I haven't installed the 0.9.8 driver yet though. I wonder whether this can be connected with the PCM (mutex hangup). Since alsa really doen't have any serious documentation it is hard to say.

I actually saw a simlair problem on one of the bug lists for toshiba 5205. So the issue should have been recognized and will hopefully get fixed. I am just waiting for the 2.6 kernel final to get released and try with that.

Enabling complete acpi for the system for some reason hangs the system completely during boot. So pci=noacpi is actually necessary. I thought this might actually be the problem.

To reply that the kernel is at fault here seems a little bit odd. I have tried this on two kernel and unless 2.6 borrows this part of the code to the new kernel the problem shouldn't happen (unlikely since 2.6 is alsa based). The acpi patch also does not provide a solution. This should only be necessary with 2.4.22 kernel (which I have patched as well) while with the 2.6 kernel it should work out of the box. I will try few more things but after spending an equivalent of a couple of days on trying to get the sound working I am loosing my patience.

P.S. Although the sound did work in slackware 9 installing alsa was still very problematic due to acpi.

Well, trying to install 2.6 didn't sort the problem for me! I wish I knew how I sorted the issue. I am running 2.4.22 with acpi and alsa on my tosh and it works.. Sorry I can't be more specific.
I do believe though that there is a problem with the 2.4.22 kernel, alsa and toshiba laptops...
Installing slack 9.0 with kernel 2.4.20 didn't pose much problem to get sound and alsa to work. Nothing like that...

Let's hope that 2.6 final version solves the issue!
L

Try the oss free drivers in arts. They worked for my similar problem:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...5&pagenumber=1

Cheers
Amos

Well I will just try to reinstall or wait for a 2.6 kernel to come out. Thanks for all the help.