HP 2133 Audio/Sound

[kuantem]

Strange thing happened yesterday, and I should have saved a few log files before I passed out in front of my computer...

I did a fresh install of PCBSD 7.0.1 on my HP 2133 last night and when I logged into KDE4, the opening sounds played through the on-board speakers! I don't know weather this was a fix in 7.0.1 or a glitch during install. I then installed XMMS and loaded a few MP3s to make sure I wasn't hearing things, and again the on-board speakers worked!!!

Well, right before I passed out, I started an install of Gnome(PBI). When I woke up this morning, I found that my laptop crashed and I couldn't get video nor on-board sound working... well, video is back on, but no sound :(


pcm0: <VIA VT8251/8237A High Definition Audio Controller> mem 0xfebfc000-0xfebfffff irq 17 at device 1.0 on pci128
pcm0: [ITHREAD]
pcm0: <HDA Codec: Analog Devices (Unknown)>
pcm0: <HDA Driver Revision: 20080420_0052>

Any idea what may have caused this?

kuan

[TerryP]

Can't say w/o seeing the install scripts from the experimental pbi.


By any chance, do you know what driver your sound card was using before hand?

[kuantem]

well, i was using snd_hda (With the same problem) in FreeBSD 7.1-BETA2 and the default WinXP VIA Audio drivers for the HP 2133 in Windows before i installed PC-BSD 7.0.1

Can't say w/o seeing the install scripts from the experimental pbi.


By any chance, do you know what driver your sound card was using before hand?

[TerryP]

cc, try opening the file /boot/loader.conf as root and add this line:


snd_hda_load="YES"


That will tell loader to load the snd_hda audio driver on startup (NB if you use something like GRUB and boot the kernel directly, it won't work). When you reboot, you should have the driver loaded.


I've never been able to get sound 'working' after loading a module by hand, I've always had to use loader.conf & reboot... but you can also load it by hand via the command 'kldload snd_hda' in a root shell.

[kuantem]

Thanks Terry, I actually already gave that a try, however the same issue resides...

I CAN get sound when i plug external speakers into the headphone jack but NOT from the on-board speakers.

Also, from what I can remember, the one and only time that i DID hear sound from the on-board speakers is when PC-BSD for one reason or another recognized pcm0 as pmc1. Usually when i check dmesg I get "pcm0 blah blah blah"... in the case where I was able to get audio from the on-board speakers dmesg said pmc1. Again, on reboot the speakers no longer worked.

I'm not to well versed in how FreeBSD recognizes and manipulates hardware drivers, but maybe pmc 0 or 1 had something to do with it. Or maybe i'm WAY off ;)


cc, try opening the file /boot/loader.conf as root and add this line:


snd_hda_load="YES"


That will tell loader to load the snd_hda audio driver on startup (NB if you use something like GRUB and boot the kernel directly, it won't work). When you reboot, you should have the driver loaded.


I've never been able to get sound 'working' after loading a module by hand, I've always had to use loader.conf & reboot... but you can also load it by hand via the command 'kldload snd_hda' in a root shell.

[TerryP]

To me it sounds like a problem with the system knowing what to use :\. You might be able to play with the command line mixer (http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=mixer&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+7.0-RELEASE+and+Ports&format=html) program (basically like the volume control in KDE, but specific to FreeBSD, and usually more reliable). If the problems just getting it to play on the onboard/internal speakers, when it already works if you plug in externals - you might try the FreeBSD Questions mailing list. There is a section in the freebsd handbook with the details.


I can't find anything in the systems manual about a pmc device or sound source, not to say it's not there somewhere. FreeBSD generally names devices based on drivers, /dev/da0 being the first da (scsi/usb hard disk) device, and /dev/da0s1 being the first slice (primary partition) of it. How they actually name the drivers, I don't really know but at least they usually name the manual pages and devices consistently. pcm is probably short for Pulse Code Modulation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCM), basically digital sound; but not very meaningful to people that don't know audio stuff.

[kuantem]

AHH! Good call Terry, I shoulda looked there as well!

I received this error when trying to use the command line mixer

pcbsd% mixer
mixer: SOUND_MIXER_READ_DEVMASK: Device not configured

This'll be something to look into.

[kuantem]

Console mixer is working... no sound from the on-board speakers yet.

I read somewhere that pcm0 and pmc1 have to do with different types of sound hardware. If you have multiple sound cards they would be labeled in the order at which PCBSD recognizes them. I also read that it has to do with the source of the audio hardware. Eh, I have no idea really. All i know is, when the sound was working PCBSD had recognized my audio hardware as pcm1 (right after a clean install. I have no idea why). And right now dmesg shows pmc0. I'm wondering if there is a way to reassign my audio drivers to pcm1 instead of pcm0.

kuan