# Gentoo users with a VIA8233A chipset, please read this

## Niek

Finally there is ALSA support for the VIA8233A onboard sound chipset!  :Smile: 

Read more in this posting:

http://www.mail-archive.com/alsa-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg03104.html

Bye, Niek.

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## FINITE

I will wait. In trying to get my sound working with alsa I almost screwed things up so bad that A reisntall of gentoo looked like it the only way out. When the bugs are worked out then I will use alsa for my chipset (vt8233a).

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## arkane

WOOOHOOO, someone finally addressed something about the new board I have coming in the mail!

But, the southbridge chip I will be using is a VT8233 without the A.  

Is there a difference between the VT8233 and the VT8233A?

(I haven't had the pleasure of doing anything with the new board, it's probably coming today, but need to wait for the ram, processor, and memory)

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## FINITE

heck ya there is a difference. For me it was about 4 hours total of trying to get the sound working with alsa. If you don't have the "A" at the end of the chip name (ie:via8266a) then you won't have the same problems with sound using alsa. Supposedly the alsa updated driver stuff takes care of via8233a chip problems but I havn't tried it yet, gona wait for the buggs to get worked out  :Very Happy: 

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## arkane

gonna wait for the bugs to be gotten out of a bug fix?

 :Smile: 

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## FINITE

So is there any updated information on this? Its been about a week or so since this thread was started just checking if it worked for anyone. ALSA with viakt266a that is. Later.

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## FINITE

 *arkane wrote:*   

> gonna wait for the bugs to be gotten out of a bug fix?
> 
> 

 

You will be fine with alsa. Your board, according to what you said  *Quote:*   

> But, the southbridge chip I will be using is a VT8233 without the A. 
> 
> 

  is not the version with alsa support problems.

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## Niek

 *FINITE wrote:*   

> So is there any updated information on this? Its been about a week or so since this thread was started just checking if it worked for anyone. ALSA with viakt266a that is. Later.

 It's working very well for me, the sound quality it much better then the commercial OSS drivers  :Smile: 

You _really_ need revision 1.19 or later of the via8233.c file, or else it won't work.

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## cfrogjump

Niek,

What MB are you using? and how do you have alsa configured? I'm new to this. How can you tell the version of the via8233.c file?

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## FINITE

Here is the url from which you can obtain the 8233.c file http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/alsa/alsa-kernel/pci/via8233.c[/code]

I don't know where to go from there however. What needs to be done with this "c" file? I am assumming that you have to replace the existing one with this one and use the same driver as before. When I "downloaded" the text file I was thinking it was going to be a module or something so thats what messed me up. Aslo is ther an easy way to get rid of oss? I have the freee version installed from source. Can I just delete all of the files associated with it? Thanks.

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## cfrogjump

Best I can figure we need to compile from cvs to use the new via8233 file. Also I found the ac-97-codec.c file and it does have the ALC650 support listed in it. I don't know how to compile from cvs or else I would try it. So unless we can figure out how to compile the cvs source then we are out of luck until a new version gets released.

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## FINITE

Well If you can figure out how to download the source then we can get it installed. What I read thouhg seems to just point to downloading the via8233.c file as text and doing somehting with it.

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## Niek

This is what you have to do:

* Download the alsa-drivers-0.9.0-rc1 tarball

* Unpack this tarball

* Download the via8233.c file (as described above) and overwrite the via8233.c file in alsa-drivers-0.9.0rc1/alsa-kernel/pci

* Compile/install alsa-drivers as described in the INSTALL file

Hopefully this will work  :Smile: 

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## cfrogjump

I tried that and it doesn't work. Although I can't remember the errors I was getting.

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## FINITE

It worked fine for me. Are U sure that you have the via8233a chip? Post the error if you could.

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## cfrogjump

I'm going to try again tonight.

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## cfrogjump

FINITE - did you replace the ac97-codec.c file also or just the via8233.c?

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## FINITE

Just the via8233.c file. This chipset has no use for the ac97 module regardless of what you may have read. Why do I say that about ac97? I read at the manufacture of my mb's website that the sound chip is ac97 in the generic specs of the board. Don't know who the manufacture of your board is but you may have read something similar there or other places.

Make sure that you only have sound support compiled into the kernel (some have to do it proper some as module). Simply replace the .c file with the newest via8233.c file with the downloaded source for alsa-driver. Configure and make install. Then emerge alsa-utils etc. using the nodeps switch so that emerge doesn't complain about you not having alsa-driver. Supposedly you can run "emerge inject alsa-driver" but I could not get it to work. If it did work that would have told emerge that alsa-driver was already there versus using nodeps, don't think it really matters. Fallow the desktop guid for sound from there.

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## cfrogjump

OK, so I did that with the via8233.c file and it compiled and installed fine, but the only problem that I am having now is the sound is only mono, I get nothing out of the left speaker. Any suggestions?

BTW, the MB that I have is the MSI KT3 Ultra ARU.

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## FINITE

It could be that the mixer is not centerd. Check and make sure that the "left-right" slider is in the middle. Unless you are using the alsamixer (amixer) in which case you have to go command line.  Also make sure that all the speaker cables are sucurely connect at all points. Most likely its a mixer problem though. 

If amixer is what you used to unmute then typing amixer will show if the mixer settings are your problem.

```
# amixer

Group 'Input Gain',0

  Capabilities: volume mute jointly-mute

  Channels: Front-Left Front-Right

  Limits: min = 0, max = 15

  Front-Left: 11 [73%] [mute] [---]

  Front-Right: 11 [73%] [mute] [---]

Group 'Master Mono',0

  Capabilities: volume mute capture exclusive-capture

  Capture exclusive group: 1

  Channels: Front-Left Front-Right

  Limits: min = 0, max = 31

  Front-Left: 23 [74%] [mute] [---]

  Front-Right: 23 [74%] [mute] [---]

Group 'Headphone',0

  Capabilities: volume mute jointly-mute

  Channels: Front-Left Front-Right

  Limits: min = 0, max = 31

  Front-Left: 0 [0%] [mute] [---]

  Front-Right: 0 [0%] [mute] [---]

Group 'Master',0

  Capabilities: volume mute jointly-mute capture exclusive-capture

  Capture exclusive group: 1

  Channels: Front-Left Front-Right

  Limits: min = 0, max = 63

  Front-Left: 50 [79%] [mute] [---]

  Front-Right: 50 [79%] [mute] [---]

[chopped for brevity]
```

Thats from the desktop guide. Check the front-left and right settings for master. Should of course be 50/50.

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## dmason

I have been using the alsa 8233a drivers for a while, they work very well for me anyway, cannot say anything about the quality of the sound coming out because my speakers are abolute crap, and I don't have anything better to attatch to them. I have experienced some jitters with having cpu intense apps open, but that is because the AT7 according to reviews, actually eats a healthy amount of cpu cycles. Perhaps one day I will actually get an add-on sound board. But other than that one problem, everything is running very well, I would actually say that this runs much more stable than my windows 2000 install with sound anyways, since winamp liked to die at times.

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