Omnibook900, Neomagic NM2200 256AV and ALSA problems

Hi!

I'm using an old HP Omnibook 900 for playing and poking around.

I've installed Debian 3.1 with the latest 2.6.11 kernel and am trying to get
any sound out of the box, since I remember having heard sounds
on a previous old Linux setup - kernel 2.2.x and OSS stuff.

root@box:~# lspci
0000:01:00.1 Multimedia audio controller: Neomagic Corporation NM2200 [MagicMedia 256AV Audio] (rev 20)

root@box:~# discover
Neomagic Corporation NM2200 [MagicMedia 256AV Audio]

root@box:~# lsmod
snd_nm256
snd_pcm_oss
snd_mixer_oss
snd_pcm
snd
soundcore

So I have an Neomagic 256AV chip which doesn't seem to be working
with the snd_nm256 module. ALSA does not give me any sound. Alsaconf says it finds "nm256" and "Legacy" of which the first one goes through the pass fine, Legacy (as nm256 is a PCI chip trying to emulate legacy ISA stuff) doesn't work at all.

Alsamixer says:
root@box:~# alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: no such device

In the kernel boot messages (dmesg |grep -i nm256) I get the following error:

nm256: no ac97 is found!
force the driver to load by passing in the module parameter "force_ac97=1" or try sb16 or cs423x drivers instead.
NeoMagic 256: probe of 0000:01:00.1 failed with error -6.

There are no such modules provided with ALSA (at least in the kernel packaged version) and forcing the mod parameter doesn't work either.

Any ideas? Do I need to install OSS to get any audio?

I recently used a Hewlett Packard 900 Omnibook with a Slackware based OS and was able to setup sound using alsaconf. The distro was Vector Linux 4.3. I also used Minislack 0.2 and managed sound the same way. Vector Linux 4.3 is based on Slackware 9.1 and Minislack 0.2 is based on Slackware 10.

When running alsaconf from the command line I was presented with a list of two items. The first item was the Neomagic 256 soundcard and the second was for ISA/PNP Legacy cards. I had no luck in selecting the Neomagic 256 soundcard from the list but struck gold when I selected item number two. A list of sound cards was then presented, all of the cards were selected by default. I selected the option to allow alsaconf to probe the cards on the list. After completion of the probe alsconf successfully configured the card as a Crystal Audio CS4232. It worked just fine.

I did experiment with a Fedora Core 1 distro and was able to configure the sound card as a CS4232 using sndconfig.

With Vector Linux 4.3 I had to run alsactl and alsactl store to use audio successfully.

I know you guys won't see this post but I want to THANK YOU!!
This worked and got my omnibook 4150's sound working in knoppix! I had it working in Madrake 9.0 but it took a lot of work to finally find this soultion! w00t! :cool:

any advice available on knoppix.. if I'm unsuccessful on live disk, would installing make a difference?

omnibook 900 same hardware..

kernal kernel? not installed with sound modules..

thinking about trying to mod mod.conf file.. reading it.. looks like it autoupdates.. and there are read/write issues

currently HD has arabian on it.. similar frustration..

basically trying to build a portable web design laptop.. any recommendations on os/config.. highest resolution 800x600

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lucky Linux

I recently used a Hewlett Packard 900 Omnibook with a Slackware based OS and was able to setup sound using alsaconf. The distro was Vector Linux 4.3. I also used Minislack 0.2 and managed sound the same way. Vector Linux 4.3 is based on Slackware 9.1 and Minislack 0.2 is based on Slackware 10.

When running alsaconf from the command line I was presented with a list of two items. The first item was the Neomagic 256 soundcard and the second was for ISA/PNP Legacy cards. I had no luck in selecting the Neomagic 256 soundcard from the list but struck gold when I selected item number two. A list of sound cards was then presented, all of the cards were selected by default. I selected the option to allow alsaconf to probe the cards on the list. After completion of the probe alsconf successfully configured the card as a Crystal Audio CS4232. It worked just fine.

I did experiment with a Fedora Core 1 distro and was able to configure the sound card as a CS4232 using sndconfig.

With Vector Linux 4.3 I had to run alsactl and alsactl store to use audio successfully.

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