On Thu, 17 Jan 2013 19:58:07 -0800
John Jason Jordan <[email protected]> wrote:
> I have a desktop computer, Lucid x86_64, which functions only to
> stream internet radio, play movies, and serve as my backup to get on
> the net in case I hopelessly screw up my laptop, which is my real
> computer.
>
> So today I come home from a trying day at PSU only to discover that
> PGE has provided me with yet another of their mini-outages (third one
> this year). The laptop was still running, but the outage was
> sufficient to kill the desktop and the stereo to which it is attached
> via Bluetooth. "Bluetooth" in this case means a Logitech adapter that
> receives the signal from the desktop computer's Bluetooth dongle and
> sends it out to RCA jacks that plug into the magnetic phono input on
> the stereo.
>
> Usually this is not a problem, I just flick the switch on the stereo
> and reboot the desktop, and I'm back in business. However, today I
> could not get the Bluetooth device between the desktop and the stereo
> to connect. I also could not get my phone to connect to the device,
> nor could my laptop. OK, power outage fried its little Logitech guts.
> Maybe. Oh well. I'll fiddle with it some more later when I have more
> energy. "I'll just connect the cable that I used to use before I
> bought the Bluetooth device," I thought. The cable has an adapter
> that plugs into the headphone jack on the back of the computer and
> terminates in RCA plugs that go into the back of the stereo.
>
> So I connect the cable, but no tunes. Nada. After much fiddling with
> what pass for GUI sound controls in Lucid I decide to connect the
> cable to my phone. No problem, sound gloriously streaming to the
> stereo, thanks to TuneIn Radio app on Android and KQAC streaming
> radio.
>
> There are also jacks on the front of the computer, but I can't get any
> sound out of them either.
>
> I am using the audio on the ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard, which lspci
> says is "nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev. a2)."
>
> Sound on this computer has always "just worked." It was working fine
> this morning when I left the house. After rebooting it no longer
> works.
>
> I need ideas for how to diagnose what is wrong. The only thing Lucid
> gives me are System > Preferences > Sound and Applications > Sound and
> Video > PulseAudio Volume Control. Neither is much help. Any
> suggestions?
First off, check to see if the kernel still sees your sound chip.
$ ls /proc/asound
should show you a "card0" directory, a symbolic link to card0
named NVidia, probably "oss" and "seq" directories, and an
assortment of regular files. Assuming everything is there, do a
$ cat /proc/asound/cards
This should return something like:
0 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xdeef8000 irq 22
If that's there, then you know that the kernel saw your sound
chip and loaded the driver module. As far as it's concerned,
everything is just ducky. (The address and IRQ number will
undoubtedly be different.)
The next step is to fire up alsamixer, so:
$ alsamixer -c 0
(The "-c 0" tells alsamixer to use card 0. This might not be
necessary, but then again, it might.) You should have a nice
ncurses graphical set of mixer controls: Master, Headphone, PCM,
Front, Surround, and so on. My guess here is that everything has
been muted -- alsa defaults to that state. (You'll see "MM" at
the bottom of each control.) Select the controls you want with
the arrow keys and hit "m" to un-mute them. When you're done, hit
<esc>, and you should be good to go.
All that said, if you don't have the proper files in /proc/asound,
then you're going to have to do some more digging. Look through
dmesg and /var/log/messages to see where things went wrong at
boot. Given the nature of the power glitch, it's entirely
possible that something got changed in your BIOS settings. If all
else fails, try booting into the BIOS setup. I would set all
settings to their defaults, save, and exit. Re-enter the BIOS
setup, change anything that needs to be changed to what you need
it to be, then save and exit again. If all goes well, things
should Just Work. (Uh-huh, where have I heard that before?)
Now before you say "that can't happen", I assure you it can. It
happened to me, only in my case it was memory DIMM settings,
rather than the sound system. And it used to happen all the time
at work. So much fun getting a BSOD as soon as I turned on the
computer. (That latter error turned out to be caused by a low
CMOS battery. The motherboard drained it quite rapidly, and I'd
have to change it every couple of months. Have you checked your
battery lately?)
Anyway, sorry for the wall 'o text, but I hope it helps.
--Dale
--
"The 25120 is easily cooled by employment of a six-foot fan, 1/2
inch from the package. If the device fails, you have exceeded the
ratings. In such cases, more air is recommended."
-- From a Signetics data sheet.
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