I hope this is the right spot for this.

There are lots of sources for information about how to configure the ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe on board sound card. This is an NForce2 board with RealTek AC97 sound system with 5.1 and lots of goodies.

My Problem: hours and hours of googling and grepping and modprobing resulted in exactly ZERO sound. This included installing the nvidia drivers from here.

Finally though, its running. Here's what I've learned, in a brief sort of format.

Release R5A16.

1. Install the nVidia drivers from the above link. I found that the networking was unneccessary as forcedeth works fine.

2. edit /etc/hotplug/blacklist and add the following sound modules:

snd-pcm-oss
snd-mixer-oss
snd-intel8x0
snd-ac97-codec
snd-pcm
snd-timer
snd-page-alloc
snd
gameport
snd-mpu401-uart
snd-rawmidi
snd-seq-device

this prevents hotplug from trying to load them over the top of nvsound.

3. edit /etc/alsa/modules and comment out ALL the lines (don't delete them, in case you need them later). Add these three lines (note the last two are really long lines that wrap here. enter as single lines!)

alias sound-slot-0 nvsound

install nvsound /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install nvsound ; sleep 1; /usr/bin/nvmix-reg -f /etc/nvmixrc -L >/dev/null 2>&1 || :

remove nvsound { /usr/bin/nvmix-reg -f /etc/nvmixrc -S >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove nvsound

4. run "update-modules" and then reboot.

5. you should now have sound. play with nvmixer if you like, seems to have some interesting features.

If this doesn't work , and still doesn't work, and even more, doesn't work yet again then...

6. Here's the part that took me over a week to find : take the cover off your box and look on the motherboard for the Front Panel Sound pins. this is the jack where your front panel sound jacks attach (if you have them, which I don't which is the real problem here). According to the manual with this motherboard, pins 5-6 and 9-10 are jumpered from the factory and these jumpers are removed to attach the front panel jacks. IF THESE PINS AREN'T JUMPERED YOU GET NO SOUND FROM THE REAR JACKS!!! The kicker is, my new-in-the-box motherboard did not have these jumpered (ugh). anyway, its located towards the back of the board between the bottom two pci slots and the back plate of the case. check those jumpers.


what I learned: RTFM. duh. also, many software problems are not.... Only go through 2 or 3 software attempts before going back and trying the hardware side again even when you're SURE you've got it right

what I didn't learn: whether the stock ALSA drivers work with this, maybe, when I recover from this marathon, I'll try that out. I do know that the kernel and hotplug detect and try to insert snd-intel8x0, so probably it does.
hth

Andrew

_________________
ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
Hauppauge 350/150
ASUS V9520Magic/128MB Geforce FX5200
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L200R0 200GB
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton

Since this was posted almost a year ago, can anyone verify that I would need to do this procedure for the latest release of knoppmyth?

not AFAIK. When I updated to whatever current version I'm running (R5b7?, I don't know) it just worked. Be sure to jumper that front sound jack properly though.

A

_________________
ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
Hauppauge 350/150
ASUS V9520Magic/128MB Geforce FX5200
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L200R0 200GB
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton

Well I get sound fine in WinXP and I checked the jumpers and they are fine.

you should be fine then, It should "just work"

_________________
ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
Hauppauge 350/150
ASUS V9520Magic/128MB Geforce FX5200
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L200R0 200GB
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton

I just did a clean install of r5c7 and the spdif audio out is not working right. The wiki says just set myth's audio device to ALSA:hw:0,2 that does not seem to work. However, when I run the command aplay -D hw:0,2 /usr/share/games/tuxracer/sounds/tux_on_snow1.wav it plays the file. I noticed there is no /etc/asound,conf and the site I got my .conf file for my previous install is down. Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Stuart

make sure that you turn on the appropriate settings in alsamixer as well. Some of the settings are muted by default since they are not used for analog.