PL5C Drivers

Hi guys,

Recently finally switched over to Ubuntu to finally escape 15 years of Microsoft hell. However, I'm having problems that are leaving me on the verge of going back to bad olde Uncle Bill!

Basically, I can't find any audio drivers for my PL5C advent laptop. I've Googled like there's no tomorrow. I know this forum is filled with great *nix minds, please can you help? I don't understand...VGA = Perfect. Wireless = Spot on. Didn't even need to install drivers. However, I can get no sound whatsoever!

Thanks in advance,

Sark

[Prometheum]

Do you know what sound card you have?

lspci and/or aplay -l might help.

The only documentation I can find claims it is a 'Realtek High Definition Audio'. I found some XP/Vista drivers for it at the Mecer website, but none for Ubuntu. It's onboard.

[Prometheum]

What is the output of

aplay -l

and

lspci

.

Hint: brand names are usually totally useless in finding out what hardware you really have.

Originally Posted by Sark

I'm having problems that are leaving me on the verge of going back to bad olde Uncle Bill!

I can't imagine going back to using that pile of shit. I'm starting a technology/networking course next Friday and I just know they'll be using windows computers. Not looking forward to using them

Originally Posted by Prometheum

What is the output of

aplay -l

and

lspci

.

Hint: brand names are usually totally useless in finding out what hardware you really have.

Gotcha...
ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB4x0 High Definition Audio Controller

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC861VD Analog [ALC861VD Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

[Prometheum]

Well, ALSA knows about your card, so you have drivers for it and whatnot. Maybe check alsamixer to see if something's muted?

Hi guys,

Nothing is muted in ALSA, but now I have discovered the problem.

When I plug speakers/headphones jacks into the headphones socket, I hear sound through them. However, It would seem that the speakers on the actual laptop aren't working. Unsure how to sort this problem, if it can be sorted at all! Like Prometheum said, ALSA knows my card is there and it is obviously working correctly as I can hear sound through the headphones socket, so it isn't a soundcard driver problem.

Still needing help here guys!

Sark

Originally Posted by Sark

Hi guys,

Nothing is muted in ALSA, but now I have discovered the problem.

When I plug speakers/headphones jacks into the headphones socket, I hear sound through them. However, It would seem that the speakers on the actual laptop aren't working. Unsure how to sort this problem, if it can be sorted at all! Like Prometheum said, ALSA knows my card is there and it is obviously working correctly as I can hear sound through the headphones socket, so it isn't a soundcard driver problem.

Still needing help here guys!

Sark

I've had similar problems, the Intel HDA and intel iwl3945 are very crapy drivers. And companies aren't helping, at all. I've had countless problems with both
They try so hard to hide what is the true chipset of your card/s.

Anyway, look if you have the latest version of alsa, if you don't, upgrade (from source). If it's still not working, downgrade. If you hopelessely can't get it to work, the FreeBSD Intel HDA is way more stable.
See if your wireless card is supported and install either DesktopBSD or PC-BSD.

Edit: Is there a software switch for the **speakers? it could very well be the problem.

[Fate]

I've run into problems like these before, universally on shitty laptops with cheap shitty software-driven sound "hardware" (think the old "Winmodems" that had to handle all of their data processing via the system processor, back in the Windows 98 days) that doesn't have a physical leaf switch in the headphone jack but instead relies on a software switch to send the signal to the headphone jack or speakers.

I have a friend with a Sony Vaio laptop that had the identical problem but in reverse. His speakers worked, but if you plugged in headphones nothing would happen. Pretty sure that thing also had a bottom-of-the-barrel Intel audio chipset. We found a lot of guides and forum posts about config file fiddling and various options to add and none of the advice in them worked.

Eventually he upgraded to Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) and like magic the headphone jack started working. Whatever config file change happened between Gutsy and Hardy apparently did the trick. We may never know what the hell it was, though.

(Yeah, yeah, helpful. I know.)