FC7 on dv6516tx - no sound

Hi,

I am having problems getting my sound to work in Fedora 7 x86-64 installation on my dv6516tx (dv6500T series). My mixer shows full volume but I am unable to unmute the button on my top row of the keyboard. It always shows amber light meaning that sound is muted. I have tried updating my alsa drivers but no sucess. How the hell do I unmute this thing?

thnks

 

What mixer program did you use to check your volume and mute/unmute status? Actually, if you can tell us what you tried in details, that would help us narrow down where your problem may be.

 

I have used the alsamixer to check the mute/unmute status. It shows full volume. I have got HDA Generic sound card. Intel HD Audio card. (snd-hda-intel)
I have got the latest alsa-driver alsa-utils and alsa-lib from alsa website and compiled all three of them and intalled them. But no luck.

 

What channels do you see when you use alsamixer? On my machine, I have two channels that influence the volume on my laptop's speakers: PCM and Front. Both need to be unmuted and high enough for me to hear something.

Did you try headphones? Sometimes alsa acts funny and even if your speakers won't produce any sound, headphones will work...

 

What option are you giving to your snd-hda-intel? My Vaio FZ requires it to has an option "model=vaio" to work correctly - this is an option for sigmatel chip, AFIAK. Perhaps you can look up for list of available options online.

 

I see four - Master / PCM / caller ID / Off hook
I even tried headphones - doesnt work.

Am not giving any options to it. How do you do it.

 

Hi, gr81,

Sorry for the interruption of this thread.

I was following your post concerning "problem with hp recovery after fedora 7 install" to here. I have almost the same question as yours.

I got a tx 1000 recently, with Vista installed already. But I am not so comfortable with Vista yet, hence I installed an Xp system and wiped out Vista in disc C. However, later I found a lot of drivers missing (for example, netcard and soundcard). So I had to recover to the Vista. My recovery disk D was intact, as I did nothing on it. F11 failed, as it happened in many posts here, and continued to process to XP again.

Later I tried to add linking information directly with disk D to the C:\boot.ini, but got "hal.dll missing" messages. And I tried your method as well. But differently and unfortunately, I have no linux CD at hand, so I install a grub for windows (C:\GRDRL) and successfully boot into it. By choosing:

title System Recovery
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
chainloader +1

I got "bootmgr is missing" error this time. Faint.....

My purpose of posting here is calling for some resorts. Can you please post your intact C:\boot.ini (I presume Vista still got a link with it) and your detailed menu.lst , which gives more precise codes to redirect to Recovery Disk?

 

It varies from distro to distro. In Fedora, adding line "options snd-hda-intel model=vaio" at /etc/modprobe.conf should do the trick. Please change "vaio" to whatever option appropriate for your laptop.

<edited> Ok, I looked around, and it seems dv6516 uses ALC268, if it uses same chip as the newest dv9500. IFL90 also uses this chip. If this is the case, this may cause bit of the problem. You may need to patch your ALSA as the official version may not have incorporated the fix yet. Once it is patched (or it is incorporated into mainline) then model=toshiba seems to be the option you should give.

I wish you good luck. Although option=vaio could give my Vaio sounds from get-go, it took a recent upgrade for ALSA (I am using Arch ATM) to make everything (including jack-sensing) correctly.

 

I finally got it done.

The Partition F was later found to be (hd0,3). Thank Gr81, your another post is really very very useful. I think you should initiate a post, specifically introducing your method, since it looks like a common problem of many hp users.

Of course a Linux System is not essential, we can install the Grub for Windows (GLDLR) directly under C disk, and that works well. But I am skeptical that any non-Linux users will take consideration of this trick. My experience with Ubuntu and Grub really benefit me a lot.

 

Good call. Indeed the IFL90 uses that very chipset. I've posted instructions on how to install Ubuntu on an IFL90 and maximize hardware support right here:

http://lddubeau.com/avaktavyam/linux-on-a-compal-ifl90/

I don't know whether that would be helpful for somebody with Fedora. Anyway the ALSA bug report with the necessary patches is here:

https://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/alsa-bug/view.php?id=3104

The last one I tried was realtek15 and that gave me good sound support but the front speakers don't get muted when I put in my headphones. I work around that bug by manually muting the speakers. I think the newer patches also fix that problem but I have not tried them. There's a fair amount of confusion about how the patches need to be applied and I'd rather let the dust settle a bit than chase patches.

 

FINALLY I got my sound working and my oh my, what an exhilarating feeling is it to hear sound coming out of my speakers. After hours of messing around with my files, I finally decided to give a last try and download the development version of alsa-driver 1.0.15rc2. I had already downloaded the stable version of alsa and this was not working, so I had not expected this to work. Restarted my system after compiling and installing the driver and LO BEHOLD the alsamixer finally shows me a range of controls along with the front and headphone volume. I didn't have to patch/edit/modify a single file.

Lemur, when I plug my headphones into the socket, the front speakers automatically get muted and when I pull them out they get unmuted. Maybe you should also try the development version driver.

 

Acchaa! Thanks for letting me know. I will try when I get time.

 

Just an update for you guys. I installed FC8 last night and wow man, my touch sensitive volume controls started working like magic. I can now increase or decrease the volume by swiping my finger. Even the mute button is working wonderfully. The new fedora version has integrated these things beautifully.