AC '97 No Sound, Tried all suggestions (Don't yell at me!!!)

I have an Asus A7V8X-X MB with onboard VIA AC97 sound.
Even after trying the Alsa argument at boot (I'm running the live CD) I get no sound (in control center it says "device can't be opened for playback"). I can't check my mixer settings, since kmix has no sliders in the gui (in the shell, when I run kmix I get a slew of error messages). Alsa-autoconfig runs with no errors, but makes no difference. And sndconfig finds the AC97 card but says it's not supported.

And just to give you an idea of how linux-illiterate I am, I don't even know how to view my lspci -v output in a way that will allow me to paste it into this post (so if you think it'll help, tell me how, please)...

Thanks in advance...

Edit: here's my lspci -v, finally:

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8377 [KT400/KT600 AGP] HostBridge
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X motherboard
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0
Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 PCI Bridge (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0
Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0
Memory behind bridge: d6000000-d7efffff
Prefetchable memory behind bridge: d7f00000-dfffffff
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X motherboard
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 21
I/O ports at d800 [size=32]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X motherboard
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 21
I/O ports at d400 [size=32]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X motherboard
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 21
I/O ports at d000 [size=32]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 82) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X motherboard rev 1.01
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 21
Memory at d5800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 ISA Bridge
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X motherboard
Flags: bus master, stepping, medium devsel, latency 0
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X motherboard rev. 1.01
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 255
I/O ports at b800 [size=16]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50)
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X Motherboard
Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 22
I/O ports at e000 [size=256]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 74)
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc. A7V8X-X Motherboard
Flags: bus master, stepping, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 23
I/O ports at b400 [size=256]
Memory at d5000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Subsystem: Gateway 2000: Unknown device 3019
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 16
Memory at d6000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at d8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
Expansion ROM at d7fe0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

Whee... A few hours reading posts in the forum and some checking on the ALSA Project site fixed my problem... Thanks to all of you who helped (from your earlier posts), even if you weren't aware of it.

I have the same problem. Could you share what you did to fix it? Thanks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by postjm9

Whee... A few hours reading posts in the forum and some checking on the ALSA Project site fixed my problem... Thanks to all of you who helped (from your earlier posts), even if you weren't aware of it.

---

Hi.

I also have this problem with the same onboard VIA AC97 sound.

postjm9, can you please tell us how to work this out?

Thanks.

§8-)

Here's what he told me:

"My card started working once I realized that I needed the via82xx driver and told ALSA to load it manually, instead of depending on autoconfiguration. "

I don't even know what that means, though. haha

later,
Rick

Someone else I know had problems with AC97, while I didn't. I have an Apollo mk20n.

Hi, you have to load the via82xx sound modules in order to make the thing work. Here's how:

open a konsole or xterm or whatever you want and type:

$su

then put root's passwd

#modconf

then go to "kernel/drivers/sound"

and look for "via82cxxx_audio" item, then hit ENTER to load, it will display a message telling if succeded or not.
Then open kmix and set the volumes (it may say UNKNOWN CARD) but works anyway.

Also if you have kernel 2.6 you can try ALSA sound modules under "kernel/sound/pci"

bye!

modprobe via82cxxx_audio does the same thing but only temporarily, they are lost after a reboot. I always use modconf to install modules that are there.