VIA VT8223 AC97 sound card problems
 

Hi

i have a onboard VIA VT8223 AC97 sound card chip and am having some problems with it. I can get the card working with OSS which is ok but when i play games the sound doesnt work because it looks at /dev/dsp and says file not found.

OSS has the sound card working at /dev/dsp0 so i tryed ln -s /dev/dsp0 /dev/dsp the linking worked but games still say cant find /dev/dsp.

When i cat /dev/dsp i get a load of XXXXXXX it doesnt stop til i ctrl+C. i have also tryed cp /dev/dsp0 /dev/dsp but that doesnt work also.

This is my modules.conf file
-------------------------------
#### Modified by oss-install ####

# Note! OSS/Linux doesn't use this file. All kernel sound
# services have just been disabled during oss installation.

alias char-major-14 off
alias sound off
alias midi off
alias sound-slot-0 off
alias sound-service-0-0 off
alias sound-service-0-1 off
alias sound-service-0-3 off
alias sound-service-0-8 off
alias sound-service-0-11 off
alias sound-service-0-12 off
alias sound-slot-1 off
alias sound-service-1-0 off
alias sound-service-1-1 off
alias sound-service-1-3 off
alias sound-service-1-8 off
alias sound-service-1-11 off
alias sound-service-1-12 off
alias sound-slot-2 off
alias sound-service-2-0 off
alias sound-service-2-1 off
alias sound-service-2-3 off
alias sound-service-2-8 off
alias sound-service-2-11 off
alias sound-service-2-12 off
alias sound-slot-3 off
alias sound-service-3-0 off
alias sound-service-3-1 off
alias sound-service-3-3 off
alias sound-service-3-8 off
alias sound-service-3-11 off
alias sound-service-3-12 off
alias char-major-116 off
alias snd-card-0 off
alias snd-card-1 off
alias snd-card-2 off
alias snd-card-3 off
alias snd-card-4 off
alias char-major-108 ppp_generic
alias tty-ldisc-3 ppp_async
alias tty-ldisc-13 n_hdlc
alias tty-ldisc-14 ppp_synctty
alias ppp-compress-21 bsd_comp
alias ppp-compress-24 ppp_deflate
alias ppp-compress-26 ppp_deflate

# ALSA portion
alias char-major-195 nvidia

--------------------------------------------
Its really big so am guessing there is something wrong with it ?

Any help would be great

PS. am using slackware 9.0

first try chmod 777 /dev/ds*
if that does not work I recommend switching to alsa sound drivers:

do not load the oss module, or if it is static in your kernel disable it, and remove all references to it from modules.conf

download all the sources on alsa.sourceforge.net
extract each one
in the device sources type ./snddevices
then in each package (this order) type:
./configure
make
make install
install packages in this order:
alsa-driver alsa-lib alsa-oss alsa-utils then you won't need alsa-tools (card specific not your card)

I have the same card and use slack 9.0 the alsa drivers are much better. also using alsamixer you can set more options like base, center, surround, depth, etc. then you save the settings for a reboto with "alsactl store" and add "alsactl restore" to the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.local

it works a hole lot better.

Hi

Thanks for all that info

I removed the OSS modules from the modules.conf file then rebooted but when i do lsmod i get the following :

Module Size Used by Tainted: P
nvidia 1628288 11 (autoclean)
n_hdlc 6304 1 (autoclean)
ppp_synctty 6016 1 (autoclean)
ppp_generic 15452 3 (autoclean) [ppp_synctty]
slhc 5040 0 (autoclean) [ppp_generic]
uhci 24560 0 (unused)
ehci-hcd 14632 0 (unused)
usbcore 58144 1 [uhci ehci-hcd]
snd-via82xx 11680 0 (unused)
snd-pcm 55968 0 [snd-via82xx]
snd-timer 13284 0 [snd-pcm]
snd-ac97-codec 36936 0 [snd-via82xx]
snd-page-alloc 6004 0 [snd-via82xx snd-pcm]
snd-mpu401-uart 3136 0 [snd-via82xx]
snd-rawmidi 12480 0 [snd-mpu401-uart]
snd-seq-device 3904 0 [snd-rawmidi]
snd 27492 0 [snd-via82xx snd-pcm snd-timer snd-ac97-codec snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device]
soundcore 3332 0 [snd]
pcmcia_core 38112 0
ide-scsi 8048 0
8139too 15272 1
mii 2240 0 [8139too]

i tryed removing all the snd modules by doing rmmod but when i reboot they just load again. How can i remove these for good ?

Thanks again

well 2 things here:
1) snd-whatever is the way alsa does its drivers meaning you do have alsa driver. at least I think so, but alsa does not come with slack 9 so if you didn't install it then you do not have it.

2) also, did you enable hotplug while doign the install? the slackware hotplug though useful for some people is very very anoying to most slack users I know (Don't string me up if you are a long time slacker liek me, but love it) I recommend:

a) disabling hotplug (may cause unforsene problems who's solving would gain you a bit of experiance, to disable hotplug type: chmod 000 /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug
if this brakes to much stuff you can re-enable it with: chmod 755 /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug

b) disabling the audio section of the hotplug system:
edit /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug
comment out any section that looks liek it has to do with audio and leave everything else unchanged (never tried, and can't be sure I can help)

actually for option b, I made a mistake, rc.hotplug would have no usefult things to comment out inside it, edit the /etc/hotplug/whatever to change it, however option a and everything else is still valid.

I cant remove the hotplug as i have a usb modem connected to it.

I put all the snd- names into the blacklist file and rebooted my box and when it loaded it said no sound cards found when running alsactl store and alsactl restore. When i removed these from the blacklist and rebooted i nevre got an error so i ran alsamixer.

When i run this all my bars are muted(MM) and turned down also the card says VIA 8235.

When i up the volume and unmute it i can still not heard any sounds. Any other ideas at all ?

I just downloaded and installed the alsa-xmms driver and it worked!

but i still cant seem to get it working with anything else

ok, I think I follow..
so alsa is installed good
here is what to do:
first off only alsactl restore should be run at boot, not alsa store
second run alsamixer and set everything how you like and unmute it (set bar and then also unmute is seperate task)
when that is done run alsactl store once, do not have it autorun ever
then make sure you run the snddevices script inside the alsa-driver sourcecode

then after all that type: chmod 777 /dev/ds* /dev/sn* /dev/mix*
that way yuohave access to the devices

also are you by chance runnign devfs? (if you don't knwo then you aren't)

Oh I just saw your modules list, I knwo the problem, alsa oss compatability is not loading, did you compiel the alsa-oss sources?
add the following modules to load at boot:

snd-pcm-oss
snd-mixer-oss
(might be snd-oss-mixer and snd-oss-pcm, but I think I was right first time) these make it so you can use alsa drivers for oss programs. that shoudl fix the trouble

i loaded them modules ok. sound plays fine in xmms and mplayer

when i try and run a game i get the error

/dev/dsp input/output error
cound not mmap /dev/dsp

any ideas what that could be ?

thanks for all this help!

EDIT - wow, didnt realize this post was this old from august. i will repost my question.

exodist, first off all your info is very helpful. thank you.

not to take away from jay's problem and i dont mean to change this thread but i actually have a different problem. i have the same sound card on my mobo and i am running slack 9.1 with alsa 0.9.6. my sound plays, but has static behind all the sounds including games. audio cds play fine in xmms. here is my output from lsmod
Module Size Used by Tainted: P
nvidia 1628576 11 (autoclean)
snd-pcm-oss 37252 1
snd-mixer-oss 11992 0 [snd-pcm-oss]
printer 7040 0 (unused)
uhci 24496 0 (unused)
ehci-hcd 16872 0 (unused)
usbcore 58400 1 [printer uhci ehci-hcd]
snd-via82xx 11712 1
snd-pcm 55904 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-via82xx]
snd-timer 13252 0 [snd-pcm]
snd-ac97-codec 37240 0 [snd-via82xx]
snd-page-alloc 6004 0 [snd-via82xx snd-pcm]
snd-mpu401-uart 3136 0 [snd-via82xx]
snd-rawmidi 12512 0 [snd-mpu401-uart]
snd-seq-device 3920 0 [snd-rawmidi]
snd 27460 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-via82xx snd-pcm snd-timer snd-ac97-codec snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device]
soundcore 3332 4 [snd]
via-rhine 13552 1
mii 2304 0 [via-rhine]
crc32 2880 0 [via-rhine]
ide-scsi 9424 0
agpgart 39576 3

any thoughts on the static?