I put up a post vaguely related to this in laptop forum a couple weeks back - only response said 'google it' - alas, as I said in that post, I had done, yet hadn't found anything that seemed wholly relevant.

I'm prepared to concede this was probably due to my stupidity and technical lameness. But altho' things have moved on a
tad since then I'm still somewhat stuck and wondered if anyone might be able to suggest anything.

The original problem was no sound in Mandrake 9.1 on a new laptop with Asus motherboard and the well known Intel i810 sound 'card'. I'm sorry but I've been unable to link to it from here- told you I was a lamer

The original answer mentioned acpi, so purely on empirical grounds (ie. everything I've managed to find on the subject also says acpi is the key, though even now I still don't understand why :0 lamer again) I activated acpi (involved loading a couple modules - I gather I missed the option on first installation, probably because i didn't understand the implications) and created a new boot profile called linux-test with the switch set to acpi=on.

Confusingly, you have to do this from command line in lilo.conf I find; simply setting acpi-on via harddrake does nothing - this may represent a bug in Mandy 9.1's system management software - and then I booted into linux-test to see what would happen.

(Somewhere in my deeply untechnical brain I found the common
sense to make a new boot profile for this, and leave the original
alone..thank goodness as it turned out.)

Well...when I boot linux-test acpi is initialised fine, and the sound
module is then loaded fine as well! Woo Hoo! I listened to a CD on this very laptop just last night.

BUT...(I'm getting used to the fact that there is always a but ) with this setup, the puter takes nearly 10 minutes to boot (no exaggeration, I timed it); the system fan is on constantly being very noisy indeed (I'm reasonably sure from usage in windows and my original install that this should only cut in when required); and the screen responds to the keyboard veeeeeeerrrrrryyyyy sllloooooowly making not only gui WP usage next to impossible, but even affecting console input.

Haven't tested this boot profile at runlevel 3 yet have to admit.

So, the result is that yes, I have sound, up to a point. Actually I have a choice on boot between a non-acpi system that mostly works perfectly (except there's no sound) or an acpi enabled system on which i can listen to CDs...but do virtually nothing else at all! And I have to listen with a very very loud system fan going continuously.

I accept that acpi support for linux generally (not simply for mandrake) is still at the beta stage - but at the same time, I know there are many users out there who have managed to get sound going on their (recent) laptop without too much of a downside.

If anyone can suggest anywhere else I might look,or any other hacks (preferably quite minor; I'm the archetypal non technical newb and editing lilo.conf is possibly the most nerve racking thing I've done this month) I might try, I'd be more than happy to hear from you. Meanwhile, onward with the googling...

and hey, at least the modem works!!!

cheers

jd

the following has a good chance of being wholly useless but here goes anyway.

did you install acpid? I think mandrake by default does not install everything that is needed to use acpi properly. You can check it by right clicking on the battery meter that should be on the panel and trying to configure it while having acpi=on (or in KDE control center -> power management). If the relevant packages are not installed, install them with rpmdrake - just search for acpi in package names and install whatever comes up - you can do this part with acpi=off.

Only advice I can offer is check the BIOS settings there are a few ACPI things in most bioses today, not sure if any are useful, but it cannot hurt. Oh and if you figure out how to get into the bios settings, take note of teh settings and maybe do some research on them.

I had an issue with my system not initilizing sound of NIC correctly and detecting some estranged video card, turning off one bios setting titles Plug and play OS, and a reboot later, I heard the most glorious sound come from the KDE initilize screen.

OK so the sound was annoying as shit, but it played at least. Need to figure out how to specify my own sound there, maybe a vader wav saying "Impressive, most impressive." or something instead of what sounds like cracking glass.

Many thanks to both for suggestions - quatsch, when I tried to install acpi modules Harddrake asked me for one of the install disks (I think it was international cd 1 but I may be misremembering) and I just did what it told me to. When I next have the opportunity I'll check this under all available sources (urpmi is a Cool Tool yeah, but if you're on a dialup it can take a while to get all of the sources configured ) and then see what else I need to do.

WhiteChedda, alas I've already checked out the BIOS of my nice pretty new laptop and there is no - NO - option available for switching off p'n'p OS (I am now convinced, perhaps irrationally, that if this option did exist, it would solve all my problems!) and indeed no option to reset IRQs manually - nor anything else you'd expect in a 'real' BIOS...

This computer is brand new. There are no updates or etc. available. Several black marks to ASUS for going for the windoze like 'computer as a black box you shouldn't mess with' option. But there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about this state of affairs right now.

I do have sound, as I mentioned. It's just that when I boot the acpi-on version, there are too many drawbacks.

Anyone got any suggestions about the almost -unusable slow keyboard, or the system fan? Or even the 10 minute boot?

Would be most grateful for any further pointers.

Cheers

jd

is there a particular point where the boot seems to grind to a halt or is it slow all along? E.g., very often people complain about hardware detection taking forever. You can disable a lot of things from starting at startup in mcc->system->drakxservices.

btw, all needed packages are on CDs. I was just wondering whether everything needed got actually installed - it did not when I tried around with acpi (my laptop still supports apm and I'm happy with it so I gave up on acpi).

Hello Quatsch,

Many thanks for your further input. Should just let you'n'all know that I'm going to be away from home for a couple days from tomorrow and while I may be able to connect from where I'm going to be at, I can't count on it. So forgive me if you write some more and I don't seem to respond.

The boot sequence....well, with my linux-test boot profile, ie. with acpi on, it appears to proceed normally (ie. I get the LILO menu, then the boot splash screen with the customary messages, including that which tells me the sound module has loaded fine, waheyyy!) until the point at which X starts and KDE begins to load (I left these defaults very much alone, besides for functionality I quite like KDE).

At this point I get the blue screen, and the clock-face mouse pointer which indicates that KDE is loading. And it sits there. For ages. Then the bottom half of the KDE initialisation panel appears. And sits there. And then it disappears, and I have a blue screen again. And then finally, some time later, KDE springs to life and I have access to my apps and peripherals. Total time: approx. 10 minutes.

And then I try to use one of the apps (actually I tried to access Mandrake Control Center which entails entering root password) and the screen takes a few seconds to half a minute or so to respond to each key press.

It does this in whatever app I open - meanwhile, the touchpad mouse works just great, and I can play CDs if I want to. If I can stand to listen to them with the fan going full blast...

Googling suggests that the fan can be controlled with an app called gkrellm which sounds like it has more to do with Gnome than KDE but I presume will work anyway. When I have some time I'll investigate further - but meanwhile, it's the keyboard responsiveness (or lack of) that's bothering me most. If anyone has any suggestions I'd be most appreciative.

Thank you,

jd.

Your problem seems to differ from mine anyway as far as Pnp. but there are Usually some ACPI control settings in the BIOSES as well. I was wondering if one of these would help you. I think I get a toggle to use ACPI or PIC or similar in mine. Anyway, good luck.

Oooh, this seems like a long time ago, but I just wanted to say thanks to guys for trying to help me with this problem, and to give a progress report.

Well, what can I say. It all works. I have sound; I have a keyboard that works normally; and even the system fan, though it still runs continuously, is quieter than it was ie. tolerable. Great stuff!

What did I do? Well, here's the rub. I did absolutely....nothing.....at......all.....

Several days after the last post I made to this thread I tried my linux-test boot option again ie. with acpi on. I intended to make some basic investigations, check acpi -V and status of acpid daemon and contents of assorted /proc files and so on and so forth as per random suggestions from here and there.

But - it booted clean, taking no longer than my default settings, and now everything suddenly works, and I didn't do anything.

I feel like a windows user. I rebooted and now it works.

Why is this stuff sometimes like black magic? Duhhhh.

Now, if someone could only point me at how (if I can) I adjust acceptable CPU operating temperatures so that the fan will work as it should, I'd be really happy.

What the ... ?

cheers from the baffled

jd