# onboard nforce4 sb sound support? [SOLVED]

## Jahoviah

I'm currently running amd64 2005.0 and I am trying to set it up for

desktop usage. Most things work fine but I am unable to get hw-acc graphics

(question out in the desktop forum) and the sound to work.

My motherboard is a MSI K8N Diamond (nForce4) and the onboard sound chip

is a Soundblaster Live! 24-bit. I have tried modprobing the usual sb modules

but they don't seem to work. Also I searched the kernel sources for nforce4 sb support

but didn't find any.

Does anyone have this config working?Last edited by Jahoviah on Thu May 12, 2005 9:02 am; edited 1 time in total

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## hw-tph

Lately Creative has been a little creative about what gets to be called Soundblaster and what doesn't. All is not emu10k based, so post the output of lspci (lspci comes from the pciutils package).

Håkan

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## Jahoviah

 *hw-tph wrote:*   

> Lately Creative has been a little creative about what gets to be called Soundblaster and what doesn't. All is not emu10k based, so post the output of lspci (lspci comes from the pciutils package).
> 
> 

 

I'm going to post the output of lspci as soon as I get home (monday) but from what I remember the lspci gave the information  that it was LS Audigy based if that information helps?!

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## polle

I believe th on board sound of nforce4 is supported by the  i8x0 driver

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## Jahoviah

 *polle wrote:*   

> I believe th on board sound of nforce4 is supported by the  i8x0 driver

 

Hmm.. but all the motherboard manufacturers (e.g. ABit, Asus and MSI) have different soundcards on their nforce4 chips right? i8x0 (Intel right?) would certainly not work for all different soundcards.

Nevertheless I'm going to try, building in support for it in my kernel as soon as I get home.

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## polle

you may be right about the different audio chips, found another interesting link:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2005-March/msg00926.html

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## Jahoviah

 *polle wrote:*   

> you may be right about the different audio chips, found another interesting link:
> 
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2005-March/msg00926.html

 

Very nice bit of info! Thanks.

Hmm. Now it's just a matter of finding out when this fix will become a part of the amd64 patched gentoo kernel.

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## polle

I don't think that will take long, in the meanwhile you could try mm-sources:

http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=mm-sources

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## hw-tph

lspci output would still be interesting to me as I'm looking to buy a similar board. So pretty please?  :Smile: 

Håkan

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## Jahoviah

 *hw-tph wrote:*   

> lspci output would still be interesting to me as I'm looking to buy a similar board. So pretty please? 
> 
> Hï¿½kan

 

Of course! I'll get back to my apartment on Monday so I will post the output of lspci then!

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## Jahoviah

lspci | grep -i audio

0000:01:0d.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy LS

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## Jahoviah

Hmm.. installed latest version of alsa and used ca0106 drivers (as told by alsa soundcrd matrix) and i get sound.. but testing with mpg123 the sound is too fast and a little bit jumpy?!  :Smile: 

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## Jimmy Jazz

 *Jahoviah wrote:*   

> Hmm.. installed latest version of alsa and used ca0106 drivers (as told by alsa soundcrd matrix) and i get sound.. but testing with mpg123 the sound is too fast and a little bit jumpy?! 

 

have you activate the snd_rtctimer module ?

Jj

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## friedmud

I personally have this soundcard working fine...

See the thread over here for some more info:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-309233-highlight-.html

It is possible that between the time I got it working and when you were trying something broke.  When I get a chance I will update alsa and see if everything is still fine.

Happy hunting!

Friedmud

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## Jahoviah

 *Jimmy Jazz wrote:*   

>  *Jahoviah wrote:*   Hmm.. installed latest version of alsa and used ca0106 drivers (as told by alsa soundcrd matrix) and i get sound.. but testing with mpg123 the sound is too fast and a little bit jumpy?!  
> 
> have you activate the snd_rtctimer module ?
> 
> Jj

 

Erm.. no. I followed the ALSA guide under gentoo.org -> docs -> desktop usage,

and as i recall there was no mentioning of this module.

how do I do this?

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## Jahoviah

Hmm.... everything works perfectly when trying with mplayer, xmms and gaim (sound events),

but mpg123 still makes the music to fast and jumpy.

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## Jimmy Jazz

@Jahoviah

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> how do I do this?

 

Hello,

it's a kernel module

```

# cat /usr/src/linux/.config

[...]

CONFIG_RTC=m

CONFIG_SND_RTCTIMER=m

[...]

```

and add in /etc/modules.autoload/kernel-2.6 the following line

```

snd-rtctimer

```

i really do not remember which application needs 

```

dev.rtc.max-user-freq = 1024

```

in /etc/sysctl.conf, but that doesn't harm to add it  :Smile: 

@+

Jj

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## pdr

For anybody else looking into this mobo: if it the same setup as my non-diamond MSI sli with sb chip, your power supply must provide the (non-atx spec) -5V line or it won't work. I liked my Seasonic supply a lot and ended up disabling on-board sound and sticking in an Audigy card instead...

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## Jahoviah

 *Jimmy Jazz wrote:*   

> 
> 
> ```
> 
> # cat /usr/src/linux/.config
> ...

 

Ok. I had CONFIG_RTC=y and snd-rtctimer was created by alsadriver so I added it to modules.autoload -> kernel 2.6.

 *Jimmy Jazz wrote:*   

> 
> 
> i really do not remember which application needs 
> 
> ```
> ...

 

Added that too, but it still doesn't work. Also I've noticed that NO apps work with Alsa, only with OSS. All apps play jumpy, too fast sound with Alsa. 

Any ideas?

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## Jahoviah

Solved it hmm...

Under advanced settings for alsa plugin, I changed period time (ms) from 50 to 1.

Now mp3 plays perfectly. Sound has worked with alsa all along in mplayer.

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