[Leaplist] Alsa problems with Debian Etch

[Hank Lambert]

I have installed Debian Etch on my Gateway 7330GZ laptop. I am tackling 
what I believe is my final hurdle, alsa is not working. ESD is working; 
I have system sounds and can play music through Amarok as long as esd is 
selected as the xine output plugin. As soon as I select alsa as the 
output plugin, I get a "xine was unable to initialize any audio drivers" 
error.

So the help that I need is either to get alsa working, or find out how 
to get Totem and VLC to use esd for sound. I have training videos that I 
use for work that are AVIs, and I need to be able to play them. I 
installed the latest alsa-driver, alsa-lib, and alsa-utils, ran 
alsaconf, and unmuted all selections in the volume control. I also added 
the external amplifier in the volume control and de-selected it. Still 
no alsa. I am not opposed to using esd exclusively as long as I can use 
them across the board.

When I ran cat /proc/asound/cards, I got the following:

Case:/home/hank# cat /proc/asound/cards
 
 0 [I82801DBICH4   ]: ICH4 - Intel 82801DB-ICH4
                                     Intel 82801DB-ICH4 with unknown 
codec at 0xe02ff800, irq 169

The unknown codec led me to believe that might be the problem, so I 
installed VLC. VLC runs the avi's at about 1 frame a second, not real 
conducive to watching videos. Regardless, it dtill didn't have any audio 
output. I looked in the various settings, but I found nothing to help me 
work with audio. Opening the avi in Amarok did produce audio, so I know 
their is audio with the avi. Here are some of my other tests:

lspci -v produces:

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM 
(ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M)
AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
           Subsystem: Rioworks Unknown device 202f
           Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 169
           I/O ports at e400 [size=256]
           I/O ports at ee80 [size=64]
           Memory at e02ff800 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512]
           Memory at e02ff400 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
           Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2

lsmod | grep snd produces:

Case:/home/hank# lsmod | grep snd
snd_intel8x0                   30332  1
snd_intel8x0m                15980  0
snd_ac97_codec            83104  2 snd_intel8x0, snd_intel8x0m
snd_ac97_bus                  2400  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm_oss                 38368  1
snd_mixer_oss               15200  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                        68676  4 
snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer                       20996  1 snd_pcm
snd                                47012  7 
snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore                       9248   2 snd
snd_page_alloc             10184   3 snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m,snd_pcm

And finally:

Case:/home/hank# asoundconf list
Names of available sound cards:
Case:/home/hank#

If someone can point me in the right direction, I would really 
appreciate it. I have Googled this for days now, and can't seem to find 
my answer. I am working on April 5th, so I do not know if I will make 
the Installfest, where I am sure I could have gotten it fixed.

Thanks,

--Hank