No sound. Am I forced to update my Suse 10.1

I have Intel D845GLLY with audio subsystem for AC ‘97 processing using the SigmaTel STAC9750/66 codec
The audio subsystem consists of the following devices:
• Intel 82801DB I/O Controller Hub (ICH4)
• SigmaTel STAC9750/66 audio codec

When I try to configure the audio card, I get an error message
“82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC’97 Audio Controller
module snd-intel8x0 can’t be loaded. This may be due to wrong module parameters, including
invalid IO or IRQ parameters”

Alsa is not running and won’t start. When trying to start it, I get a message:
“/etc/init.d/alsasound start returned 1 (undefined error):
Starting sound driver: via82xx…done”

Snooping through the forum I found these lines:
olli@piika:/> rpm -qa | grep layer
olli@piika:/> rpm -qa | grep ffmpeg
olli@piika:/> rpm -qa | grep vlc
olli@piika:/> rpm -qa | grep codec

Result: nothing. Only “xine” produced some results:

olli@piika:/> rpm -qa | grep xine
xinetd-2.3.14-12
xine-lib-1.1.1-24

“speaker-test -c2 -l5 -twav” produces an error message:
“Totem cannot be started
Could not open resource for writing.”

So. Looks like everything concerning sound is a mess.
I went to the page opensuse-community.org/Repositories/10.1 and found out, to my horror, that the support for 10.1 has been discontinued since May 30th, 2008.

After countless hours and days of hard labor I have managed to configure my SuSe 10.1 to run nice and smooth as a web server. And it has served me beautifully for some time already. I haven’t needed the sound. Now the things have changed a bit and I’d need sound.

Is there a way I could do this without updating to newer version of SuSe. I would not want to do it, because I am sure, that it would again mean countless hours and days of hard work (don’t tell me that updating is actually a simple process! I won’t believe you!).

So id like to stick to my 10.1 and still have sound.

I just realized that the problem may be traced to the fact that the mother board of my machine is not the one that SuSe 10.1 was originally installed with. The original mother board broke and I replaced it with this Intel D845GLLY (and went through all these incredible motions which were needed to enable the operating system to accept the new - different - mother board).

You could try working your way through the audio troubleshooting guide:
SDB:AudioTroubleshooting - openSUSE

however as you noted, openSUSE-10.1 is no longer supported. So if your new mother board requires an alsa update, you could find it difficult, although you may still find some packages on SLES10 repositories.

This basically shows you do not have some of the more common 3rd party players nor 3rd party codecs installed.

xine-lib is the “crippled” Novell/SuSE-GmbH version of xine. Typically that should be removed and replaced by the Packman packaged version of libxine1. Now 10.1 is no longer supported by Packman, but the 10.1 repos are still on line:
Index of /pub/linux/misc/packman/suse/10.1

However if it were me (and it would not be me as I would not keep an old 10.1), BUT if it were me, and if I wanted to keep my 10.1, I would rip that entire packman 10.1 directory and keep a copy on an external USB drive. You can even find an alsa-1.0.14a on that packman site, which is newer than the alsa that comes with 10.1.

This does not make sense to me (or saying it different, I’ve never seen that before and its really strange). Are you certain you did not make a typo here and forget a few lines?

It may not be possible if you need kernel support with this new hardware, or if you need a new version of alsa, and if you can not manually compile the new alsa (as there are no rpms more current than those on packman for this 10.1).

I confess I am not particularly keen on supporting sound on a 10.1. I deliberately update my SuSE versions to avoid the pain that comes with that.

But if you are determined, then I can give some suggestions (but not detailed support). I recommend you determine the hardware audio codec of the new motherboard, and then search to see what support is in use for that hardware audio codec. The troubleshooting guide I pointed out references scripts to help you determine the codec.

I’ve got to admit, that you have somewhat shaken my determination. Looks like it’s going to be countless hours and days of hard labor in every case. Would it be openSuse 11.0 or 11.1, considering the problems expected?

“speaker-test -c2 -l5 -twav” directed me to page
Multimedia Loudspeaker test
where I definitely not heard a soft sensuous female voice whispering “left” or “right”, but where there were links to downloadable wav-files of different sine waves. After downloading my machine obviously tried to open the file with “totem”, but failed. The same error message appears if I try to run totem.

ahh … did you type the speaker-test in a browser?

Its supposed to be typed in a gnome-terminal or a konsole.

Thank you thank you thank you!!!

As the last final resort before starting to download openSuSe 11.1 I went to the address you gave. It was too easy!
All I did was to delete old sound card configurations and then configure the sound card! I had tried to do it about hundred times, but I hadn’t deleted the old configuration first.

Now Alsa is running, totem works, I’m getting sound from both channels so loud that the neighbors will complain no doubt.

Maybe I upgrade one of these days. But as for now, I just lean back and let SuSe 10.1 serve me all the music of the cyberspace.

Thank you oldcpu!