[lug] AC97 sound on recent kernel?

[Daniel Webb]

On Fri, Dec 08, 2006 at 06:35:34PM -0700, Collins Richey wrote:

> I have a couple of Ensoniq cards, but alsa is totally incapable of
> using them. About a year ago when I bought my Gateway PC that has a
> quite new nVidia MCP51 chipset, I couldn't getsound to work - on older
> systems like CentOS4or on new systems like *buntu, so I tried the
> Ensoniq card,but gave up after 2 frustrating weeks of googling and
> screwing with it. Meanwhile, Dapper caught up with the MCP51 curve,
> and I've had ok sound (typical on board sound, not much volume) ever
> since.
> 
> As is always the case, the Ensoniq card worked without a hitch if I
> booted Windows.

Are you sure we're talking about the same card (the 1370 chipset)?  Back when
PCI was still new, those were the most-recommended low-cost chipset by the
Linux audiophiles as far as I could tell.  I never once had a problem, with
many different MBs and distros.  I'm talking about OSS sound drivers, maybe
there was a change with ALSA?   

I haven't needed them lately because I use my Thinkpad 600Es for my sound, not
that it is an easy thing to get their wacky ISA soundchip working.  But it
does work with Etch, and the Ubuntu wiki page about it works great for Etch
too.  By 2.6.15 I was getting worried that my large collection of laptops
would be rendered obselete by the kernel since a lot of things didn't work,
but with Etch and 2.6.17 everything works peachy.

And I'm still amazed that I can play full-screen streamed MP4 with VLC on
these ancient 366 Mhz laptops, I certainly couldn't do that with anything in
Sarge.  They can barely even boot Windows XP last time I tried, even with
their memory maxed out (288M).  I would assume Vista would be completely out
of the question, assuming I was crazy enough to try.