[PLUG] Somewhat random failures

Denis Heidtmann denish at dslnorthwest.net
Sun Jul 20 15:41:34 UTC 2008


Denis Heidtmann wrote:
> Eric Wilhelm wrote:
>> # from Denis Heidtmann
>> # on Saturday 19 July 2008 18:05:
>>
>>> Well, I would not characterize the problem as the "missing sound
>>> card".  lspci returns identical results, 
>>> ...
>>> Also, lshw shows Audigy to be #0, regardless of the sound state:
>>> ...
>>> But when the system comes up with the on-board sound, amixer thinks
>>> the VIA is #0:
>>>
>>> amixer -c 0 info
>> Hmm.  Can you use the pci card in this state if you tell e.g. aplay or 
>> xmms which card to use?
>>
>> If so, it seems like one is just getting found first.  Perhaps you can 
>> use your bios settings to disable the onboard sound or somehow 
>> configure udev or alsa to address the card in some way besides "first 
>> one found".
>>
>>> I cannot reliably cause the failure, but it occurs about 50% of the 
>>> time.
>> Every other boot or a random 50%?  Useless homework exercise:  If you 
>> flip a coin to decide where to plug in the speakers at each boot, what 
>> is the probability that you'll get the right sound card? ;-)
>>
>> --Eric
> Sometimes it seems like less than every other boot, since if the VIA comes up, 
> powering off and restarting causes it to come up with Audigy, except that is not 
> always the case.
> 
> For a math class the answer is 50%.  In my world it would be closer to 0%.
> 
> I will try the BIOS.
> 
> -Denis
Done. 7 boots, 7 successful. Looks like the problem was the random order in 
which the sound systems were being found.

I guess this problem was created by the CMOS errors.  When restoring the BIOS I 
was not aware of the settings with regard to the sound.

So the question remains: Why is the CMOS checksum failing occasionally?  How do 
I investigate that? (The last failure was on the 17th--18 boots ago.)

-Denis











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