[cooker-amd64] Sound problems amd 8111 aka intel8x0, tyan s2885 mobo, smp kernel (fr. rc1)

[Duncan]

As in the subject, sound problems with
amd 8111 which uses the intel 8x0 module, on a tyan s2885 mobo, running
the smp kernel from 9.2 amd64 rc1.

There are several problems.

1) Stability.  Either the sound, or xmms, is causing hard lockups, from
time to time.  It often but not always locks the kernel HARD, no magic
srq recovery, hit the power button for four seconds to reset, hard.  Thus,
I believe it's probably the kernel/sound not xmms, as a problem with xmms
shouldn't lock it up that hard, normally, anyway.   When it happens, the
sound often stutters for about a second, repeating a short section, then
everything freezes.  It happens quick enough that I've not been able to
catch it during the stutter to see if anything else is still working at
that point.

However, it doesn't ALWAYS lock up hard.  Occasionally the sound just
stops playing unexpectedly, without even killing xmms. I can simply hit
play again, and it'll go back to playing normally.  Other times it'll
abort xmms altogether, but I can just start it again, no problem. 
However, probably 2/3 of the time, it locks up everything HARD, as
described above.

It can play hours at a time, no problem, other times it locks up in
perhaps 20 minutes.

2)  Perhaps related, likely not.  The master volume does NOTHING I can
observe.  Headphone volume is effectively master volume.  Unfortunately,
not all mixer utilities have headphone volume at all, and of course, the
simply master volume popup as in kmix from the system tray icon does
nothing.  I've been having to run alsamixer in a console to control master
volume.

Obviously, this had me real puzzled at first, as I thought sound wasn't
working at all, but then realized it was, but at an extremely LOW volume,
the default volume headphones were set at after install.

3)  Likely related to 2, the arts module chain doesn't work at all.  Thus,
I can't play with its fancy extra stereo and similar effects, nor can I
use noatun, as it plays, and I see the waveform indicator showing output,
but no sound comes out.  Thus, I can't test noatun instead of xmms to
eliminate or not xmms as a candidate for the lockups above.  Fortunately,
as long as I don't activate an effect thus introducing the arts module
chain, arts itself works, and I continue to have system sound effects and
the like (which haven't ever seemed to cause a lockup, but then it only
happens one in several hours of constant xmms playback so a few  seconds
if not second fractions of sound effect playback may simply not trigger
the lockup situation often enough to have presented itself yet).

I can live with two and three, but the stability problem REALLY needs
fixed.  I'm embarrassed with my current uptimes, as they aren't even any
better than  MSWormOS!  Thank software libre for journalling file systems
(Reiser, in my case).

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin