ASUS A7N8X and redhat 8.0 driver installation?

[BritishNemesis]

Hi All:

I'm almost a complete newb to linux. I do have some experience, and I am by no means a newbie computer user at all. I chose to run redhat 8.0 and I just got it all installed dual booting with my WinXp install. The installation went great and its all running fine and dandy. However the audio and the LAN doesn't work as its all built in to my A7n8X motherboard. Nvidia has drivers to download in RPMs for this. However I do not have a clue how to install these. If it isn't too much trouble could someone give me a dummy proof way of installing these files? Thanks!!!

[BritishNemesis]

Update:

Alright... due to my limited skills... I downloaded the rpm's and stuck them on a floppy in windows. Then I brought them over to redhat and mounted my floppy drive and then stuck them on the desktop of root. Then I double clicked on the rpm file and lo and behold it allowed me to extract it. So it did so.... and now I have lovely internet working very nicely... but more disapointingly.... no sound. There were no errors during the installation.

I've tried playing cd's and mp3's and nothing works. So I guess its back to the drawing board again. Its nice that the LAN works though. Anyone know how to get this thing to properly dedect my sound storm audio?

[Eggs]

Added PCI ID support for nForce2 MCP2-T and MCP2-A to the i810_audio driver.

I think the only integrated sound card the nForce driver supports in the intel 810... at least that is all I could find on nVidia's site.

So, I went to Asus's site to see what sound you had on your mobo only to discover that asus didn't have it listed with the other boards, so I did a search and found a link to asus's page on it (wierd) and found that it has a Realtek ALC650. On Realtek's site there is a download for the driver, I think its source though.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...=True#8Unix%20(Linux)

On the OSS website it says it has support now, but no other info :/ You could also try ALSA, but its a pain the ***. Regardless, I found this post at LQ...

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ghlight=ALC650

[markkuk]

Originally posted by BritishNemesis
I've tried playing cd's and mp3's and nothing works.

Red Hat doesn't provide mp3 support due to patent licensing problems. See the RELEASE-NOTES file in /usr/share/doc/redhat-release-8.0/ for more details.
You can download mp3 support software from e.g http://psyche.freshrpms.net/ or http://www.gurulabs.com/downloads.html
Do you have the audio cable between CD drive and motherboard connected?

[Sick Willie]

Originally posted by BritishNemesis
Update:

Alright... due to my limited skills... I downloaded the rpm's and stuck them on a floppy in windows. Then I brought them over to redhat and mounted my floppy drive and then stuck them on the desktop of root. Then I double clicked on the rpm file and lo and behold it allowed me to extract it. So it did so.... and now I have lovely internet working very nicely... but more disapointingly.... no sound. There were no errors during the installation.

I've tried playing cd's and mp3's and nothing works. So I guess its back to the drawing board again. Its nice that the LAN works though. Anyone know how to get this thing to properly dedect my sound storm audio?

Go to a terminal window, make yourself superuser and type: /sbin/modprobe i810_audio. You will probably also need to turn the volume up as the default level is rather low. You should now be able to hear a CD playing.

I had to add the above line to /etc/rc.d/rc.local or I would lose sound after a reboot.

[OldFrog]

The alsa setup of the driver should be quite easy, as you must have alsa altready in your distro:

Alsa install for the intel8x0 module

[BritishNemesis]

Alright so if I'm hearing this right.... I downloaded the intel nforce drivers? How is that possible? I didn't even know that intel had nforce boards... I thought it was just amd. So how do I fix this mess now? Can I install that realtek package over the old nforce rpm package files i already installed? Man am I now confused.

Also I was able to play my mp3 files over my mounted ntfs volume in mandrake 8.0 so why can't redhat do it too?

[Sick Willie]

Originally posted by BritishNemesis
Alright so if I'm hearing this right.... I downloaded the intel nforce drivers? How is that possible? I didn't even know that intel had nforce boards... I thought it was just amd. So how do I fix this mess now? Can I install that realtek package over the old nforce rpm package files i already installed? Man am I now confused.

Also I was able to play my mp3 files over my mounted ntfs volume in mandrake 8.0 so why can't redhat do it too?

nvidia uses a modified i810 audio driver. DO NOT install any realtek drivers. Follow the directions I gave a couple of posts up.

[BritishNemesis]

Hi sick willie.... I got this error while following your exact steps...

/lib/modules/2.4.18-14/kernel/drivers/sound/i810_audio.o: init_module: No such device
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
/lib/modules/2.4.18-14/kernel/drivers/sound/i810_audio.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.18-14/kernel/drivers/sound/i810_audio.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.18-14/kernel/drivers/sound/i810_audio.o: insmod i810_audio failed

[Sick Willie]

Originally posted by BritishNemesis
Hi sick willie.... I got this error while following your exact steps...

/lib/modules/2.4.18-14/kernel/drivers/sound/i810_audio.o: init_module: No such device
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
/lib/modules/2.4.18-14/kernel/drivers/sound/i810_audio.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.18-14/kernel/drivers/sound/i810_audio.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.18-14/kernel/drivers/sound/i810_audio.o: insmod i810_audio failed

Do you have the A7N8X or A7N8X Deluxe?

[BritishNemesis]

I have the A7N8X Deluxe

[BritishNemesis]

Also I have downloaded the ALC650 drivers from realtek and have got them all unzipped and untarred. I then start following these directions below:

******************************************************
The ALSA driver replaces the OSS/Free driver. The OSS/Free driver is
present in current Linux kernels (2.2). Since version 0.4.0, ALSA has
supported only 2.2+ kernels. The 2.0 kernels are no longer supported. You
must compile the kernel with sound support (you do not need to select
any of the other sound modules apart from sound support).

Before installing this driver, it will be helpful to read carefully
the documentation for insmod, modprobe, kmod and for the isapnp
module if you have an ISA PnP soundcard.

Module option name change after 0.9.0rc3
========================================

Note that module option names were changed in 0.9.0rc4. The 'snd_' prefix
was removed. You may use script in utils directory (module-options) to
convert your older /etc/modules.conf to newer one.

Quick install
=============

1) You must have full configured source for the Linux kernel which you
want to use for the ALSA drivers. Note that ALSA drivers are part
of the kernel, so there is necessary to resolve all symbol dependencies
between the used kernel and ALSA driver code. Partly installed kernels
(for example from distributor makers) can be unuseable for this action.
2) You must turn on sound support (soundcore module).
3) Run './configure' script.
If you have ISA Plug & Play soundcard, use --with-isapnp=yes switch.
If you want sequencer support, use --with-sequencer=yes switch.
If you do not want OSS/Free emulation, use --with-oss=no switch.
If you want turn on debug mode use --with-debug=full switch.
If you want debug soundcard detection try --with-debug=detect switch.
If you have kernel source code in another directory than /usr/src/linux,
use --with-kernel=<kernel_directory>.
Example: ./configure --with-isapnp=yes --with-debug=full
4) Run 'make install'.
5) Run the './snddevices' script to create new sound devices in /dev directory.
Skip this step, if you have a kernel with the DEVFS support.
6) Edit your /etc/modules.conf (see the kmod support section below).
7) Run 'modprobe snd-xxxx' where xxxx is the name of your card.
Note: If you have a ISA PnP soundcard you need to first run the isapnp
program from isapnptools package to initialize your
soundcard. You can also use the native ISA PnP support by
using the --with-isapnp=yes configuration switch, in which
case you do not need the isapnptools package.

You can also look at the utils/alsasound file. This script is designed for
the RedHat distribution, but it can be used with other distributions which
use System V style rc init scripts.

Note: All mixer channels are muted by default. You must use a native
or OSS mixer program to unmute appropriate channels (for example a
mixer from the alsa-utils package).

Note: This document notices the /etc/modules.conf file. Many current
distributions uses the old /etc/conf.modules file. Both names are
valid.


*****************************************************


So I check my soundcore.....


[root@localhost root]# modinfo soundcore
filename: /lib/modules/2.4.18-14/kernel/drivers/sound/soundcore.o
description: "Core sound module"
author: "Alan Cox"
license: "GPL"

And now what? I'm completely lost after that step. Forgive me for my linux newbie-ness....

[Sick Willie]

Originally posted by BritishNemesis
And now what? I'm completely lost after that step. Forgive me for my linux newbie-ness....

Again the Deluxe uses the nvidia drivers, not the realtek drivers. The only real difference that I see is that I used the nvidia source rpm rather than the prebuilt rpm. It seems that I read something somewhere about the difference in the i810_audio portion of the two.

I would recommend downloading the source rpm. You can then replace the rpm you have installed now by issuing these commands (as superuser): rpmbuild --rebuild name_of_source_rpm --target=athlon. Pay attention to a line that begins with the word wrote. When rpmbuild finishes, type: rpm -Uvh entire_name_of_finished_rpm. If it says that a newer rpm exists, then type: rpm --force entire_name_of_finished_rpm. You can then pick up with the directions I gave earlier.

If you get an error when you first try to build the rpm, you need to install the kernel source first. Leave a post and I'll tell you how to do that.

[BritishNemesis]

[root@localhost i386]# rpm -Uvh NVIDIA_nforce-1.0-0248.i386.rpm
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
package NVIDIA_nforce-1.0-0248.rh80up_2.4.18_14 (which is newer than NVIDIA_nforce-1.0-0248) is already installed
[root@localhost i386]# rpm -force NVIDIA_nforce-1.0-0248.i386.rpm
-force: unknown option
[root@localhost i386]# rpm --force NVIDIA_nforce-1.0-0248.i386.rpm
rpm: only installation, upgrading, rmsource and rmspec may be forced

Everything went well up to that point. I did the rpm build just like you said (it didn't like the target=athlon bit so I had to cut that out in order for it to work) Is there any other way to override these older drivers?

[BritishNemesis]

also here is the wrote line...

Wrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/NVIDIA_nforce-1.0-0248.i386.rpm