GeorgeVita: Trying to make sound working on a Toshiba Satellite L30-113 with Ubuntu 8.04

GeorgeVita

Trying to make sound working on a Toshiba Satellite L30-113
with Ubuntu 8.04 (also works with Puppy Linux 4.10 frugal)

a. What the system knows about the sound card?
From a terminal window execute lspci and search into the list for a line like:
Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB4x0 High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)

Then execute aplay -l which will return something like:
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC861VD Analog [ALC861VD Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Now we know that the ATI soundcard uses the ALC861VD chip.

b. Search Internet for the latest ALSA-Configuration.txt file (the copy I used is here)

c. Search into ALSA-Configuration.txt for the paragraph which lists the possible parameters for the specific chip (ALC861VD) into the Module snd-hda-intel paragraph.

For my case I found 7 possibilities: 3stack 3stack-dig 6stack-dig lenovo dallas hp auto

d. Test all possibilities using the following procedure:
1. sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base
2. add (or change) last line: options snd-hda-intel probe_mask=1 model=XXXXX (change XXXXX with the parameter to test)
3. Save & Exit from gedit
4. Shut down, boot
5. Test Speakers Audio: Insert an Audio CD, start Playing using Rythmbox music player, double click to "speaker icon" and adjust volume controls to mixer (PCM, Front, Master, PC Speaker all to Maximum with no mute)
6. Test Headphones Audio: the same as above but insert headphones in appropriate front connector.
7. Test PC Speaker: Open a Terminal window and press backspace at prompt
8. Write down result (parameter, speakers ok/no, headphones ok/no, etc)

e. Finally choose the most appropriate parameter and share your results.

For L30-113 and Ubuntu 8.04 I had better result with:
options snd-hda-intel probe_mask=1 model=3stack

Note: All above worked in a clean installation of Ubuntu from a downloaded ISO image CD (8.04.1) with all automatic updates applied. Puppy linux tests done using a Puppel 4.10 frugal installation booting via GRUB.

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