[linux-audio-user] alsa on hp omnibook 4150 success story

Hi, I just wanted to share this success story (kind of), especially with Dave Phillips. When my desktop PC (more precisely: its elitegroup mobo) suddenly ended up in smoke on Thursday [somewhere in the middle of my diploma thesis :-((] I had to revive my old HP Omnibook 4150. This laptop has a "NeoMagic NM256 piece o' crap" (citing Dave[0]) soundchip which I had not been able to use with ALSA up to then. I decided to upgrade the installed Debian version from Woody to Sarge (current testing) and in doing so I decided to give Debian's 2.6.5-1-686 kernel image a try. Of course, alsaconf tried to load the nm256 driver for the NeoMagic chip which failed as expected. As described in [1] I changed /etc/modprobe.d/sound to contain the following lines: ----8<----- options snd-cs4232 port=0x534 cport=0x538 mpu_port=-1 fm_port=0x388 \ irq=5 dma1=1 dma2=0 isapnp=0 alias snd-card-0 snd-cs4232 alias sound-slot-0 snd-cs4232 ----8<----- An 'update-modules' updated /lib/modules/modprobe.conf and suddenly I was able to start ('/etc/init.d/alsasound start') and use ALSA! Alsa-lib is version 1.0.4-1, drivers are version 1.0.4rc2. I'm quite sure I had tried this before with a 2.4 kernel without success. However, I'm really pleased now (apart from the death of my desktop PC). My digital camera (HP photosmart 715) is fully functional via USB using gphoto2 or flphoto. My Netgear Cardbus Ethernet adapter is recognized and automatically configured via DHCP. I still have to find out whether the alsa configuration survives a suspend. Maybe I'll also test jack performance later. How can I find out whether my kernel has capabilities support builtin? cat /proc/sys/kernel/?? Now I'm thinking of buying an external adapter which lets me use my IDE harddisk (the one from the desktop computer) via USB. (Yes, I have a backup, but it's two days old and it's not complete.) Experiences anyone? (Slightly off-topic) I've got to get some sleep now. Cheers, Jan [0]http://eca.cx/lau/2004/04/0494.html [1]http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=HP+Omnibook+4150