No sound with AntiX 16 on old HP Compaq Presario
 

Hi all,
I have an HP Compaq Presario B1800 laptop (Pentium M, 2GHz, 500MB ram) that originally had windows XP on it. Windows was running really slow, so I decided to give linux a try. I originally installed Linux Mint (v10, because I can only do CD Rom boot), but it would not play any video (just black screen on the video overlay). I then installed Lubuntu (v17), and it managed to play youtube videos, but no sound! I then installed AntiX (v16.2), and same thing. it plays youtube videos, but no sound! It looks like this is a common problem with ubuntu-based distros, but I haven't found a consensus on the fix. Please help! -I'm a bit new at this, so please let me know all detailed steps if you want me to try anything.

Here is some info on my sound card:
Multimedia Controller: Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW ICH6 AC'97 rev 04 Audio Controller driver: snd_intel8x0
Chip: Realtek ALC250 rev 2
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.4.10-antix.l-486-smp

(If this forum isn't the best place to post this question is, pls let me know where the best place is)

Thanks, Will

Best I can do with sprained back muscles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_uoEdhr9dk

The video covers a lot bases for a new user install.


Also. In the AntX control center. There is a Sound tester. There is also mixer settings that need adjusting.

To get the best help using AntiX. Post the output of from a rox terminal window.

Have you done a

yet?

Did you md5sum your AntiX iso before burning to make sure you did not get a corrupted download? It happens from time to time from SourceForge's site. At least with my internet service provider < ISP >

Edit: Looking over your post. Your sound chip is supported by the AntiX kernel. I have a old laptop with the same soundchip. My back is to screwed up to go get it right now.

aplay command worth a try if installed.

I'm not familiar specifically with AntiX, but my general advice is to go into the sound mixer (either alsa mixer or pulse audio mixer), and fiddle with the various toggles and drop downs.

For example, on one old laptop, I found that I had to switch audio output from "headphones" to "line out", even though it noted (correctly) that something was plugged into the headphone jack but nothing was plugged into the non-existent line-out.

On another old slate, a Motion Computing LE1700, I had to fiddle with a bunch of toggles to get it to work, and the audio output bizarrely went out the mic jack instead of the headphone jack. Strange stuff!

Bottom line is, you might have to do some weird anti-intuitive settings to get things to work properly.

Oh - if you have any headphones try plugging them in (to either port!) and see if you get any audio working that way. No really - try plugging in the headphones into the mic port also if the normal thing doesn't work. Things can get pretty crazy with old hardware and linux.

Hi all,
Thanks for the replies. I tried the headphone jack - no sound. My download had a checksum verification before burning. No issue there.
I've done the sudo apt-get update and then rebooted, but it did not solve sound issue. I've tried toggling and playing around with the alsa mixer, turning up all the sound output channels, but that did not help.

Rokytnji, if your back feels better at some point, could you tell me what you did to get your sound working? If there's another lightweight linux distro that has rock-solid sound functionality, I'd be interested in giving that a try too. -But part of me wants to stick it out and damn well fix this sound issue!

Did you try the mic jack?

Just tried it. I adjusted the levels again, including mic levels, and no sound, even from the mic jack. I also tried the "Test Sound" tool in the control center, and that didn't produce any sound.

Another thing to look for is various toggle switches. Depending on what interface you're using, it might not even be obvious where to go to find the toggle switches. At least one alsa GUI I've used simply didn't show any of the more obscure toggle switches at all, anywhere. Like, sometimes you need to manually toggle some toggle switches that are essentially mislabeled, or in a non-obvious combination.

To be honest, I never did figure out precisely what combination of things got sound to work on the LE1600 (same basic era as your laptop - it has a Pentium M 1.5Ghz). All I know is that I had to manually toggle off External Speaker or something like that every time I booted the machine in order to get audio working from the internal speakers.

I'll look into that. If you can think of where toggle switches might be, or how to toggle them, let me know. -I'll start snooping around.

It depends on what program you're using to adjust alsa settings, which you haven't specified. If you're doing it via a GUI, it may not be obvious how to figure out what the name of the program is that you're using. Usually, there is some sort of "About" menu item if it's a GUI program.

I'm using AlsaMixer v1.0.28 (the default one that came with my distro)
Will

That's the default text/console mixer, right? I don't remember if I ever figured out how to access the various toggle switches with alsamixer. I vaguely recall eventually figuring out how to get to them, but for a long time I just used a different GUI mixer because I couldn't figure it out.

Maybe the toggle switches will show up if you switch to "ALL" view mode and keep searching to the right.

:confused:


Still waiting? If you don't know what I mean. Copy and paste my command into rox terminal. Punch enter key.
Copy and paste readout into your next post using code tags. It is the # in advanced reply. Paste it in between the brackets surrounding the words code. ][

I am feeling a little better today. So later on. I will break out my Panasonic CF-48 or my IBM T23 laptops.

One of those 2 uses that sound chip. I needed to do nothing special to get sound though. Since sound test failed for you via the antix control center. Which uses aplay.

I'd listen more to this sentence.

Another thing I would check. I would go into bios settings and make sure sound/speakers are enabled.
This thread is starting to sound a bit like a hardware problem or a physical laptop setting. Like a on off switch for sound on the keyboard.

aplay is in AntiX 16 also.

https://preview.ibb.co/k4PE9Q/s1.jpg


Is this helpful? But. I think your problem is not kernel or operating system related yet.

Use the Ctrl and + key while in your browser to blow up the image on my link.