No sound from internal speaker in Dell Inspiron 1420

English Hardware
1

Hi,

I am running 10.3 on my Dell Inspiron 1420, but I can’t get my microphone and internal speakers to work.I am having a perfect sound in external speakers(though a bit less volume, which is not at all a problem).
I tried the audio troubleshoot as given in opensuse, but all in vain.
can anybody suggest me any solution?

I am hereby giving some info:::

banskt@SAIKAT:/etc/modprobe.d> cat sound

options snd-hda-intel enable=1 index=0

u1Nb.wUq5O6bR3r1:82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller

banskt@SAIKAT:/etc/modprobe.d> rpm -qa |grep alsa
alsa-firmware-1.0.16.92.git20080617-2.1
alsa-tools-1.0.16.91.git20080610-1.4
alsa-utils-1.0.16.92.git20080617-1.4
alsa-1.0.16.92.git20080617-4.1
alsa-oss-32bit-1.0.14-23
alsa-devel-1.0.16.92.git20080617-4.1
alsa-oss-1.0.14-23
alsa-plugins-1.0.14-41

banskt@SAIKAT:/etc/modprobe.d> rpm -qa | grep pulse
xmms-pulse-0.9.4-0.pm.1
xmms-pulse-debuginfo-0.9.4-0.pm.1
libpulse0-0.9.10-0.pm.1

banskt@SAIKAT:/etc/modprobe.d> rpm -q libasound2
libasound2-1.0.16.92.git20080617-4.1

banskt@SAIKAT:/etc/modprobe.d> uname -a
Linux SAIKAT 2.6.22.5-31-default #1 SMP 2007/09/21 22:29:00 UTC x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

banskt@SAIKAT:/etc/modprobe.d> head -n 1 /proc/asound/card0/codec*
==> /proc/asound/card0/codec#0 <==
Codec: SigmaTel STAC9228

==> /proc/asound/card0/codec#1 <==
Codec: Conexant ID 2c06

Now, I changed the module and now my /etc/modprobe.d/sound is::

options snd-hda-intel enable=1 index=0

u1Nb.wUq5O6bR3r1:82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel model=dell-m44

after this i did rcalsasound restart, but it gave :

SAIKAT:/etc/modprobe.d # rcalsasound restart
Shutting down sound driver done
Starting sound driver: hda-intel model=dell-m44FATAL: Module model=dell_m44 not found.
failed

i saved the alsa info in general pastebin - banskt - post number 1075340

and now the external speakers also stops working

I again changed the /etc/modprobe.d/sound and made it as it was before…
now i again ran the alsa script which is stored at
general pastebin - banskt - post number 1075352

Can anybody please help me?
I know it would be a lot of pain to go through all these, but I wanted to give as much info as I can… so I posted such a long query…

Please help me…

2

sorry, there was one mistake on my part in the above post…

i gave wrong command for speaker-test, rechecking it, (which i do always) i found that external speakers were still working but the internal speakers were as dumb as ever, and the microphone is still not working…

i would be glad to hear from you… thanks in advance…

For the last few days, i have been playing with almost everything in openSUSE… its so much a problem with 64-bit, no realmedia, no flashplayer,gnash or swfdec… nothing…

waiting to hear from you regarding the sound problem, which is really messing up things… u can’t always have an external speaker to support your openSUSE…again, thanks in advance

3

sorry, there was one mistake on my part in the above post…

i gave wrong command for speaker-test, rechecking it, (which i do always) i found that external speakers were still working but the internal speakers were as dumb as ever, and the microphone is still not working…

i would be glad to hear from you… thanks in advance…

For the last few days, i have been playing with almost everything in openSUSE… its so much a problem with 64-bit, no realmedia, no flashplayer,gnash or swfdec… nothing…

waiting to hear from you regarding the sound problem, which is really messing up things… u can’t always have an external speaker to support your openSUSE…again, thanks in advance
Edit/Delete Message

4

I’m willing to give this a try if you have the time.

This is the wrong command. The command to obtain /etc/modprobe.d/sound file information is:
cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound

Where is alsa-driver-kmp? It looks like you were unable to follow successfully the guidance in the audio troubleshooting guide. I’ll provide a suggestion later.

Thanks! a STAC9228. Thats necessary to know.

This is interesting. … makes me wonder if an ID 2c06 is the same as a STAC9228.

This model is the wrong model for a STAC9228. The “dell-m44” is the model for a STAC9205/9254, which is not the same. In fact my research for the Dell Inspiron 1420 suggests the correct model is “3stack”.

In case you are curious, from the ALSA-Configuration.txt file, the possible options for a STAC9228 are:

		STAC9227/9228/9229/927x
		  ref		Reference board
		  3stack	D965 3stack
		  5stack	D965 5stack + SPDIF
		  dell-3stack	Dell Dimension E520

… and as noted, I have read of Dell Inspiron 1420 users successfully using “3stack”.

As expected.

thanks!

Thanks for all the information, … it made it possible for me to provide you a recommendation right away, as opposed to a lengthy question/answer session. OK, looking at the script output, I see:

# Driver version:     1.0.14
# Library version:    1.0.17rc2
# Utilities version:  1.0.17rc2

This illustrates the effect of not install alsa-driver-kmp-default.

So, assuming you still have the older 2.6.22.5-31 kernel, I recommend you update your alsa properly with the following 6 commands (while your laptop is connected to the internet). Copy and paste them into an xterm/konsole with root permissions, and execute them one at a time (in sequence):

zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/multimedia:/audio/openSUSE_10.3/ multimedia

zypper install alsa alsa-utils alsa-tools alsa-firmware alsa-oss alsa-oss-32bit alsa-plugins alsa-devel libasound2

zypper rr multimedia

zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/multimedia:/audio:/KMP/openSUSE_10.3/ multimedia

zypper install alsa-driver-kmp-default

zypper rr multimedia

Then edit your /etc/modprobe.d/sound file such that it reads like this:

options snd-hda-intel enable=1 index=0 model=3stack
# u1Nb.wUq5O6bR3r1:82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel

Then restart your PC and check your sound.

Note the above solution is not for openSUSE-11.0 users, but it is for openSUSE-10.3 users with an older 2.6.22.5-31 kernel.

5

Thanks… thanks… thanks… old cpu… lotz of thanks… my inbuilt speakers are now working…

what i did is simply the following:
additions in /etc/modprobe.d/sound like:
options snd-hda-intel enable=1 index=0 model=3stack position_fix=0 single_cmd=0

u1Nb.wUq5O6bR3r1:82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel

then i ** edited the /etc/init.d/boot.local file,** added the rcalsasound restart command, as alsa was required to be restarted evvery time i boot the system…

thanks to oldcpu and melano… i got the fix in the link:
No Sound In Speaker(laptop) - openSUSE Forums

This is the wrong command. The command to obtain /etc/modprobe.d/sound file information is:
cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound

this is not the wrong command, i suppose, as i was already in the /etc/modprobe.d directory… anyway, thanks a lot…

however microphone is still NOT working…

i will be busy for 2 days,after which i can play with it again…
can i have some suggestions to fix my microphone from the sound-master of opensuse forum (u know who i am talking of…)…
thank u oldcpu… once again…

6

i must admit, u are a genius, oldcpu…
u solved it so smoothly…
thank u a lot…

plz give me suggestions for doing the microphone…

i will update the alsa as u recommended as soon as possible, nd give u a reply…

7

Great! congratulatoins!!

Was that without updating alsa?

If you updated alsa, then I think the “position_fix=0 single_cmd=0” may not be necessary, although I have read of other Dell Inspiron 1420 users applying that setting.

Are you certain this is necessary for every boot?

I vaguely remember that.

Can you advise what the current status is of your alsa?

I think you need to update to the 1.0.17 per the commands I gave. Also, can you run the diagnostic script again, and provide the output URL. To run the script (with your PC connected to the internet) and type root password when prompted for a password:

wget http://home.cfl.rr.com/infofiles/tsalsa && su -c 'bash ./tsalsa'

To test your mic, I recommend you use “arecord”, with command lines like:
arecord -d 10 myrecording.wav
and
arecord -d 10 -f cd myrecording2.wav
Notice “-d 10” means 10 second recording. Change it to “-d 5” and you get a 5 second recording.

You need to pay close attention to your mixer. In my case, after ensure my “mic” was selected (for an external mic, as opposed to “internal mic” for an internal laptop mic) I also had to activate the mic in my mixer, ensure capture and volume levels (for the mic) were adequate, and ensure I had selected the “boost”, and finally, for a good 10 minute I was stumped because my kmix was mis-configured, specifically under the “switches tab” which had “surround jack mode” set to “shared” instead of “independent”. I don’t even know what that means, but it was enough to stop my capability to record audio, until I changed to “independent”.

Your experience will be different, but the point is be very careful and exact with your mixer.

8

I have this laptop, and with 10.3 I remember having to use the updated ALSA. But when I did, I never had to do any of the more exotic things you have done to get this working.

9

That is what I suspect as well.

With alsa 1.0.16, the auto detection of one’s sound card hardware codec was improved. …

However with my having typed that, I also note openSUSE-11.0 took a step back in this area, and for openSUSE-11.0, in some cases, it is necessary to specify one’s audio.

10

Happily, that was not the case with this laptop. In 11.0 I just had to adjust the mixer levels and everything was fine.

11

Was that without updating alsa?

Yes, that was done without updating alsa… I don’t know why i did that without updating it… but it worked… I am going to update the alsa and give the results soon…

Are you certain this is necessary for every boot?

Yes, it is absolutely necessary for every boot… for sure…

Can you advise what the current status is of your alsa?

I have not changed my alsa status since my first post…

I am playing with my mic for quite a long time… i wil play the rest of the game after updating my alsa, as u have suggested… nd give the results…

In the meantime I have a dilemma… seeing me in trouble one of my friends gave me the openSUSE 11.0 dvd… shall i upgrade it or shall i keep fighting with this 10.3?
To be specific, I wanna give some details… I use my laptop mainly for 4 purposes, rest the others : a)programming(FORTRAN & GROMACS) & Matlab for my phd work
b)using skype, c)netsurfing and d)watching a whole bunch of movies… and I have various other problems apart from the sound… like realmedia, flash player, mic, etc,etc,etc… most of which are probably related to the 64-bit architecture…

what shall I do? shall I upgrade the alsa? or start from the beginning with 11.0 at hand???
My specs: Dell Inspiron 1420,2GB RAM,Intel T7250 core 2 duo, Intel X3100 GMA, winXP, openSUSE (which version???)

12

IMHO 11.0 won’t offer anything extra in the areas you are looking. And 11.0 has some audio hiccups with pulse audio. The strength of 11.0 IMHO is in its faster package management, a neat (but unstable) look at KDE-4.0.x, … a stable KDE-3.5.9, improved tablet functionality, and various bug fixes over older openSUSE versions, counterbalanced by even more bugs with new features. …

IMHO if you want to do a re-install, then go back to 32-bit with 10.3.

Or wait another couple of months and then go with 11.0. All IMHO.

13

@oldcpu,
To pdate alsa you suggested the following command at the konsole but I have a 64-bit architecture… shall I go ahead with the installation of the alsa-oss-32bit, … iguess not…

zypper install alsa alsa-utils alsa-tools alsa-firmware alsa-oss alsa-oss-32bit alsa-plugins alsa-devel libasound2
14

@oldcpu

IMHO 11.0 won’t offer anything extra in the areas you are looking. And 11.0 has some audio hiccups with pulse audio. The strength of 11.0 IMHO is in its faster package management, a neat (but unstable) look at KDE-4.0.x, … a stable KDE-3.5.9, improved tablet functionality, and various bug fixes over older openSUSE versions, counterbalanced by even more bugs with new features. …

Thanks for the information oldcpu… i forgot to mention one huge problem… does 11.0 also have the Ndiswrapper trouble?
nyway… i would like to be adventurous… if there is more problems, i can always come back to 10.3…

…possibly going to need your help in setting the audio, once again… thanks in advance…

15

I think alsa-oss-32bit is already on your system (but its an older version). Also, alsa-oss-32bit is for 64-bit users and not for 32-bit users! I think it is designed to provide 64-bit users a layer of 32-bit compatibility.

16

From what I have read, NDIS wrapper is not always smooth going for some wireless, and if you can avoid it and use native wireless code/firmware you are better off (assuming that works, of course).

For example, take a look at this thread, where as soon as a user installed an NDIS wrapper, it impacted their sound:
No sound in Suse11/Kde4 - openSUSE Forums

In their case (after trying practically everything I could think of), when we finally got around to looking at their “dmesg” output, it became clear (not to me, but to others) that their wireless NDIS wrapper had almost crashed their boot, and was likely the cause of their audio problems.
No sound in Suse11/Kde4 - openSUSE Forums - start of posts on dmesg content

17

Hi all,

Thanks to everybody for the help… special thanks to oldcpu…

I have now moved over to openSUSE 11.0 and it rocks… the sound works out of the box… the microphone works well in skype (although it does not work in krecord)… everything else is so good…

The only problem is with webcam, i cannot use it with kopete or skype,that may due to some configuration problem…

I am using KDE 3.5,… suse 11 is just superb… no probs with LAN connection, wireless connection,flashplayer, real media, nd all other stuffs that i had problems with in suse 10.3

Give it a try…
Thaks to openSUSE team nd Novell