2. The integrated sound board

2.1 Getting the ALSA drivers

So we'll compiling the latest sources from ALSA, which should work for any other distrib as well... just the kernel sources will change because mandrake uses specific patches.

You may get your kernel sources from your distribution or from http://www.kernel.org

Here can be found Mandrake sources for the kernel used in 8.0:

ftp://ftp.univ-savoie.fr/pub/Linux/Mandrake/8.0/i586/Mandrake/RPMS/kernel -source-2.4.3-20mdk.i586.rpm

and grab the tarball from ALSA:

ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver/alsa-driver-0.9.0beta10.tar.bz2

2.2 Installing them

Install your kernel sources, in my case:

rpm -ivh kernel-source-2.4.3-20mdk.i586.rpm

Then decompress alsa drivers:

bzip2 -d alsa-driver-0.9.0beta10.tar.bz2 && tar -xvf alsa-driver-0.9.0beta10.tar

Make them and install them and create the devices files:

cd alsa-driver-0.9.0beta10 && make install && ./snddevices

Edit /etc/modules.conf to set everything, and add to it the following lines:

alias char-major-116 snd

alias char-major-14 soundcore

alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0

alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss

alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss

alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss

alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

alias snd-card-0 snd-card-intel8x0

Paolo reports that in order to start up sensord on boot, he put in /etc/sysconfig/sensors:

MODULE_0=i2c-proc

MODULE_1=it87

MODULE_2=i2c-isa

2.3 Kernel Approach: The AC'97 Driver

If you are using a 2.4 or later kernel you can use the Audio Codec '97 (AC'97) sound driver, as the integrated sound card is AC'97 complaint.

You may enable your soundcard with a kernel module, as a matter of fact, you should be able to just use the module without even recompiling your kernel, because most GNU/Linux distributions have it already, just type:

modprobe i810_audio

and you should see something like this in your syslog:

  Intel 810 + AC97 Audio, version 0.21, 21:31:04 Apr 15 2002

  i810: SiS 7012 found at IO 0xd800 and 0xdc00, IRQ 11

  i810_audio: Audio Controller supports 2 channels.

  ac97_codec: AC97 Audio codec, id: 0x414c:0x4710 (ALC200/200P)

  i810_audio: AC'97 codec 0 supports AMAP, total channels = 2

or type

dmesg | less and scroll to see the kernel messages.

If everything went fine, you may add i810_audio to /etc/modules so it will autoload everytime you boot:

echo "i810_audio" >> /etc/modules

or you like monolitic kernels (no modules), follow the step above to install the kernel sources and say Y to Sound card support and Y to Intel ICH (i8xx) audio support compile your kernel, install, reboot and now your integrated soundcard is working.

If you don't know how to compile a kernel, read the Kernel HOWTO, it's easy and you'll get a optimized kernel for you system, also you'll learn a bit about that talk of using the source code (yes you are already taking advantage of it :-)