cheap motherboard w/ integrated everything

[Anton Markov]

Jing Su wrote:
>>I tend to agree with this statement, however many ASUS "value" boards come
>>with decent on-board AGP video and sound chips (such as the VIA chipset
>>and associated video chip). But without a AGP slot these are somehow
> 
> 
> I have an Asus with integrated network and sound, using VIA's chipset.
> 
> A couple of things of note... The network card, via_rhine chipset, is only
> supported under 2.6 kernels.  AFAIK, there are no 2.4 drivers for them.
> You should keep that in mind, depending on which distro/kernel you decide
> to use.  This probably won't be a big problem since everyone is switching
> to 2.6 for the default kernel.
Check on their website; Asus sometimes provides their own Linux drivers 
(opensource too as far as I know!!) For example, for the P4P800 they had 
drivers for the network and audio chips, which where later included in 
the kernel, IIRC.

> A second thing of note... the VIA soundcard that's built in isn't fully
> supported in Linux.  It has basic mixer functionality, but I don't have
> any of the advanced surround, equalizer, etc features that the Windows
> drivers offer.  Still, the sound card is supported and sounds decent.
Try running "alsamixer" (from the alsa-utils package) or 
"gnome-alsa-mixer". The old-style OSS interface used by most mixers 
(i.e. kmix) don't support all the features that ALSA drivers provide.

> A downside to the built-in audio seems to be the proximity to the CPU and
> stuff.  Whenever the CPU is working hard, you can hear some interference
> (in the form of buzzing noise) ever so faintly in the sound.  Noticable on
> headphones, but not on speakers.  Otherwise if the CPU is idling, just
> playing MP3's for example, the sound is very clear.
I'll have to agree with this; the audio gets noisy. On the other hand, 
you can turn up your headphones and "listen" to your computer work :)

> As an upside, the card comes with multiple PCM channels, which the Alsa
> driver seems to recognize and multiplex effortlessly.  No need to run
> stupid daemons like ESD or JACK.  Multiple requests to the PCM get
> multiplexed in hardware.  I'm not sure if it's hardware or driver support,
> but previous built-in sound-cards that I've seen didn't have this, so I
> was pleasantly surprised.
How did you get this to work? My Asus MB has an Inten ICH5 chip which 
has the same functionality, but I only got it working once by accident. 
Did you do anything special?

Thanks.


-- 
Anton Markov <("anton" + "@" + "truxtar" + "." + "com")>

GnuPG Key fingerprint =
5546 A6E2 1FFB 9BB8 15C3  CE34 46B7 8D93 3AD1 44B4

*** LINUX - MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU! ***
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 256 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://gtalug.org/pipermail/legacy/attachments/20041114/ae01ce19/attachment.sig>