Bug 113595 – ALSA driver not recognising nVidia MCP51 (Realtek ALC850) sound chip

• Status: RESOLVED UPSTREAM
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description junkmail 2005-11-25 15:52:37 UTC]

The ASRock K8NF4G-SATA2 contains an nVidia MCP51 chipset, utilising a Realtek
ALC850 codec sound chip. This is compatible with the intel8x0 ALSA sound driver.
However, selecting the driver:

[Intel/Sis/nVidia/AMD/ALi AC97 Controller]

in the kernel doesn't work, and neither does the equivalent driver in the
alsa-driver package.

By adding the following line to the file /usr/src/linux/sound/pci/intel8x0.c the
in-kernel driver works correctly.

 { 0x10de, 0x026b, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, DEVICE_NFORCE }, /* NFORCE4 */

Unfortunately, alsaconf still reports no compatible soundcards. Alsamixer works
as expected.

I found this solution at the URL quoted above.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Select Intel/Sis/nVidia/AMD/ALi AC97 Controller in the kernel configuration.
2.Run make && make_modules install
3.Copy kernel to /boot
4.Reboot
5.Run alsaconf

Actual Results:  
Alsaconf reported no supported soundcards

Expected Results:  
Alsaconf correctly configures the sound system.

lspci | grep audio
0000:00:10.2 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 AC97 Audio
Controller (rev a2)

emerge info
Portage 2.0.51.22-r3 (default-linux/amd64/2005.1, gcc-3.4.4, glibc-2.3.5-r2,
2.6.13-gentoo-r3 x86_64)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.13-gentoo-r3 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 2800+
Gentoo Base System version 1.6.13
dev-lang/python:     2.3.5, 2.4.2
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.12
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.59-r6
sys-devel/automake:  1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1
sys-devel/binutils:  2.15.92.0.2-r10
sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.20
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.11-r2
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=k8 -pipe -O2"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/env
/usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config
/usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/splash /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d"
CXXFLAGS="-march=k8 -pipe -O2"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks sandbox sfperms strict"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.blueyonder.co.uk"
LANG="en_GB"
LINGUAS="en_GB"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="amd64 X alsa audiofile avi berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 cdr crypt cups curl
dlloader dvd eds emboss encode exif expat fam ffmpeg foomaticdb fortran gif
gimpprint glut gpm gstreamer gtk2 idn imagemagick imlib ipv6 java jpeg kde
kdeenablefinal lcms lzw lzw-tiff mng mp3 mpeg ncurses nls nsplugin nvidia opengl
pam pcre pdflib perl png python qt quicktime readline sdl spell ssl tcpd tiff
truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev usb userlocales xml2 xpm xv zlib
linguas_en_GB userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc"
Unset:  ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS

[Comment 1 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) 2005-11-25 16:16:12 UTC]

Hmm well, this should be rather fixed upstream...

[Comment 2 junkmail 2005-11-26 00:53:07 UTC]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Hmm well, this should be rather fixed upstream...

Yes, I thought so too, but hoped it would be possible to patch the kernel driver
via gentoo-sources.

[Comment 3 Diego Elio Pettenò (RETIRED) 2005-12-08 04:45:26 UTC]

Please report that to alsa upstream 
( https://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/alsa-bug/main_page.php ) or look if it's 
already reported, then change the URL to point to the reported bug; if alsa 
guys are willing to fix it, I'll merge it into our alsa-driver. 
 

[Comment 4 Diego Elio Pettenò (RETIRED) 2005-12-18 13:49:49 UTC]

Reopen when upstream will provide a patch.