OK, I'm at the end of my tether here and desperate for some help.

I recently purchased an HP zv5120 laptop. Since then I've been grappling with different distros to try and find one that can reliably work with the hardware and have finally settled on SuSE 9.1 as it makes the best attempt at configuring everything for me. It isn't completely prefect however.

I have just about everything in a usable state - even the monitor is now in a widescreen resolution - but I just can't get reliable service from the audio device. SuSE detects it as an ATI IXP 150 card and identifies the chip as Analog Devices AD1981B. The problem is when I restart the system, or specifically whenever the ALSA system is started. During boot (or if I enter "/usr/sbin/rcalsasound start" at the shell prompt) I see:

And I have no sound in KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, or whatever.

If I load YaST2 and select the sound configurator, a message box appears telling me the number of running cards does not match the configuration files. I click YES to restart the sound system and YaST does some hidden magic that successfully brings up my sound device. I've tried using alsaconf to set up the card but haven't had any luck with it. YaST is the only thing that can do it.

Regardless of which method I try to use to configure the device, SuSE always fails to bring it up on boot and I have to keep running YaST to hear anything.

On a further aside, when the device is actually running I still hear the sound coming from my front speakers when I plug headphones in, even though sound is coming from them too!

Has anyone got any idea of anything I can do to try and sort this mess out? I'm just a couple of steps away from pretty much abandoning Windows for home use and this is the only major problem getting in the way.

Bump...

quick thought, turn off suse hardware config tool. the little netcard looking thing down in the task bar. it seems easily confused with some chipsets. remove any/all sound cards with yast, and close the soundcard config section so it will write the config, then open the soundcard config part again and add the card.

Thanks for the suggestion. but it doesn't improve things unfortunately.

It seems to me that whatever YaST2 does is slightly different form rcalsasound. One interesting thing though, is sometimes when the device is redetected YaST says that it can't complete installation due to missing kernel modules or incorrect IRQ settings, and suggests running "yast2 sound .oss" from the shell. It usually detects a card and apparently installs it, but it still isn't accessible until I reload the sound configurator and let YaST2 do a detection all over again. Sometimes I have to select the Change button on the device listing and then it performs the redetection, and everything is fine again until the next time I reboot.

lol stuart im was having the exact same problem but now I cant hear anything at all, I cant even get the card to start

ok, I managed to get my sound to work. btw just so you know I have the exact same laptop. Heres what I did. I followed the instructions at http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc...&module=atiixp and was able to get it started. If you need help with those instructions just ask.

Which distro are you using? I'm concerned about replacing anything that comes bundled with SuSE in case later updates break it.

Suse 9.1 Pro, lol its right under my username, see, where is says, "Distribution:"

You think I'd actually read that?

You must think I'm some kind of forum member or something...

OK, I'll give it a try as soon as I have some time available. Out of interest, did you remove the ALSA packages from YaST first?

stuartnoble
It seems to me that we have almost the same hw-configuration. I have a zv5000ea (zv5114ea).
My question to you is:
if you run "hdparm -d1 /dev/hdX" (please replace the X with the right number)

Does that work for you?
All i got is this:
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted

really anoying... runing without DMA isnt very fast

perhaps you got some IDE chipset working, i dont know... i cant figure out this by myself.
please reply
/Saida

Yes, I removed them out of Yast first, even though It doesnt make a difference. Just remember to have all the librarys you need for compiling those drivers.

I have the same laptop. To get the head phones only I had to play around with gnome-volume-control alittle bit. The head phones and the speakers are controlled by PCM control (On th OSS tab in gnome-volume-control) BUT I noticed that the volume controll ONLY controlled the speakers, so I hit "mute" on the volume control and sure enough the head phones still kicked out sound but the speakers were muted.

I am running Fedora 2 core, with Gnome 2. To get the soundcard running I had to follow the instructions on ALSA's web site. (I think they are the same as posted above).

I have this laptop running great with Fedora 2 core. Only changes I had to do were to make sure the X driver is the ATI Readon Moblity 7500 and install the correct ALSA .

Hope this helps.

If you need any help please feel free to email me as I might not check this post again for awhile.