[lug] Sound driver

[D. Stimits]

Elyse Grasso wrote:

> Here's a weird one.
>
> When I boot my laptop at work, the sound system always comes up. KDE
> plays its little tune when I log in, sounds on websites work, etc.
>
> When I boot it at home, the sound system never comes up. No tune, no
> sounds on websites. Soundcard detection acts like it works, but no
> sounds come out if I click the test button.
>
> I make no changes to the setup: I just shutdown the laptop at work and
> plug it in at home and start it up.
>
> There are ethernet connections at both places. The modem card stays in
> the laptop at work and is found at boot time(so it doesn't get lost) and
> the failure at home happens regardless of whether the modem cable is
> plugged into the modem card.
>
> How does the laptop know that it is at home instead of at work and why
> should that affect the sound drivers?
>
> KRUD/RedHat 8.0

In a plug-n-play system, where the BIOS is *not* set to "o/s is pnp 
aware", irq gets assigned the same value each bootup by the BIOS itself. 
If you have it set to IS pnp aware, then it is up to the o/s to do this 
setup, and values change whenever different hardware is detected and 
enabled. My guess is that your BIOS is set to IS pnp aware, and that 
when no network is detected, that it bumps the irq to the next hardware 
device, shifting it over on each PCI card that later gets enabled (and 
most of the hardware involved, even if it is integrated, is PCI). On a 
laptop I do not know if it is possible to set NOT pnp aware, but if it 
is, do so. If not possible, then shifting the network to a PCI slot that 
is initialized AFTER the sound card should make for consistent boots of 
the sound card...trick is, you may not have peripherals that can have 
swapped slots on a laptop.

D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi DOT com