Topics about VIA VT8235 and Realtek 8139 devices....

Aurelio Sánchez fae7901 at terra.es
Sun May 30 09:19:37 UTC 2004


Hi all,

Last two weeks I've upgraded an Athlon XP 2.0 desktop and an Intel
Pentium III laptop, regarding of the vastly changes in kernel and X,
from FC1 to FC2, without major tricks, but I've encountered two problems
(very silly ones) that perhaps someone could find too, so I'd like to
send the solutions at air (Maybe.....:-).

First, the desktop. A unnamed brand with MSI motherboard and Athlon XP
2.9 (1,66 GHz real clock). It has an integrated soundcard, correctly
recognized as VIA VT8235 series, but, even after setting gain controls
from ALSA up (they are always set to zero at first startup), the thing
is unable to sound.

Googling and searching in kernel Documentation about two days (very
important to install kernel-source package, if not, I'd be losten).
Finally I tested the options for via82xx sound module. In my box, it's
vital to send a 'index=0 dxs_support=1' as module parameters (anaconda
forgot that). After putting:

options snd-via82xx index=0 dxs_support=1

on /etc/modprobe.conf, and rearrange the duplicate lines between
/etc/modprobe.conf.dist and /etc/modprobe.conf (first is linked from
modprobe.conf with an 'include' sentence), my box sounds...and how it
sounds! (the sound quality is the finest I can remember).

The VT8235 sound chipset is capable to use DXS routing for sound, but in
my box, only using that setting. If you set DXS to off, or to on forcing
48 KHz, it cannot work well.

On laptop (Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo M-6500 with Intel 810 motherboard and
Intel Pentium III 700/900 MHz) the trick was so silly as
dangerous...because it renders to an unwired box (no net, no
Internet...:-). Seems that, at least for a network card Realtek 8139
built on a PCMCIA card, anaconda or something else adds as module option
for the correct one (8139too) the option 'irq=10'.

On startup, kernel and modprobe complains about this module option,
stopping the start of this device, and if you see the kernel
documentation (2.6.6 from kernel.org or from Fedora Core 2) you may find
an INDEX file mention the 8139too.txt documentation for this module, but
there  is no 8139too.txt file there!

Logically, I tested to comment out the options for the module 8139too in
modprobe.conf.....and the network card is working without problem.

I promised to report these two issues as anaconda bugs (and perhaps
kernel documentation trick for the second), if they merely are, one of
these days....meantime, perhaps the above notes may help someone.

-- 
Saludos,

Aurelio Sánchez
fae7901 circling terra Spain
fae7901 circling yahoo Spain

Registered Linux User # 272846
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Created by Ximian Evolution 1.4.6 running on Fedora Core 2





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