alsa or oss ??

bhanuvrat · 2010-04-09 21:01:41

I have a Dell Studio 1450 Laptop with 512MB ATI Radeon mobility graphics card.
There are two speakers embedded in the laptop and two audio jacks.

Alsa

As alsa is the one that is installed by default by most distros, I even had alsa with every distro I tried and none of them could output sound ( in an okay manner) .
1. There was no sound in the embedded speakers no matter what
2. There was no sound if I plugged my headphones in one of the audio jacks
3. The volume of sound that came out when I plugged in my headphones in the second jack was very less !!! It was audible only when i increased the volume level in alsamixer to maximum.

I searched a lot, and kind of tried every instruction that was there on alsa's troubleshooting page but all in vain.

OSS

I came to know about OSS while installing arch itself and though of giving it a try. And it worked !!!. I had sound on all three of them.
BUT -
running osstest tests 3 sound adapters ( namely pcm0, pcm1, pcm2) out of which only the first one plays ( is that okay?)
Plugging in a headphone jack does not disable the embedded speaker. So how do I go about disabling it? I looked for it in oss wiki but couldn't find any instructions.

Is there a way to get alsa up and running on my hardware (I will post all log files that you might need)
please help me in configuring OSS.

brebs · 2010-04-09 21:40:58

Didn't you see this post?

You should have gone straight to google, and typed in "dell 1450 alsa".

Dheart · 2010-04-09 23:02:08

Open ossxmix and when you plug in your headphones manually mute the pcm device you aren't using.

AngryKoala · 2010-04-09 23:55:24

On my ossxmix, I have to check int-speaker mute under jack for it to mute the internal speaker.

bhanuvrat · 2010-04-10 07:49:26

@Dheart and angry koala

thanks I will try that and get back here .. I have accidently screwed up my arch installation .. will get up and online in a few hours ( I think this will happen for quite a few days - until I become an arch pro).

@brebs
I had tried all possible permutations and combinations of studio 1450, alsa, linux, sound, mandriva, arch, opensuse, slackware etc etc etc

brebs · 2010-04-10 12:27:34

bhanuvrat wrote:

I had tried all possible permutations

I kinda doubt that, since they got it to work - why don't you join that thread and ask them for more info?

You gave up on ALSA too quickly.

bhanuvrat · 2010-04-10 13:16:26

no I have'nt given up .. its just that I have screwed up my arch so I am on with slackware and am just gonna give it a try.

and yes .. I noticed that they got it two work a bit later.. so ...
see ya after giving it a try

bhanuvrat · 2010-04-10 13:30:19

oops ... the steps are for ubuntu as mentioned are not compatible with slackware

bhanuvrat · 2010-04-10 14:34:11

hurray.. it worked !!!
I was baffled by the absence of /etc/init.d/alsa-utils script and hence thought that things wont work but thought of giving it a try anyways.

however I would like to know why I downloaded realtek drivers when the device says HDA-Intel ICH9 blah blah ??

@brebs thanks a zillion.. you can't estimate the degree of my happiness.

just hoping that I will be able to make things work on other distros too using these drivers.

bhanuvrat · 2010-04-10 14:38:13

and yes .. the post is dated 29 jan 2010 which means that they found the solution when my urge to find one had diminished.
I had received my dell on 8 jan ... and it was for one or two weeks that I tried every possible thing. then I moved to more critical problems such as the udev freeze while booting ( the solution to which is something i have'nt discovered yet).

I mean you can always make it boot by acpi=off or pci=nolapic but slackware does it without those boot params... why can't other distros do the same?

Arch Linux

#1 2010-04-09 21:01:41

alsa or oss ??

#2 2010-04-09 21:40:58

Re: alsa or oss ??

#3 2010-04-09 23:02:08

Re: alsa or oss ??

#4 2010-04-09 23:55:24

Re: alsa or oss ??

#5 2010-04-10 07:49:26

Re: alsa or oss ??

#6 2010-04-10 12:27:34

Re: alsa or oss ??

#7 2010-04-10 13:16:26

Re: alsa or oss ??

#8 2010-04-10 13:30:19

Re: alsa or oss ??

#9 2010-04-10 14:34:11

Re: alsa or oss ??

#10 2010-04-10 14:38:13

Re: alsa or oss ??

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