Amiga.org
Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Hardware News => Topic started by: xeron on October 26, 2005, 12:48:56 PM
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Davy Wentzler has uploaded a working via686b onboard audio driver for the AmigaOne! Unfortunately, only the first batch(es) of A1's actually have the AC'97 chip physically on the board.
It was taken off later on as Eyetech didn't think it was ever going to work. You could just try the driver to see if you have such a chip, but you can also have a look on the motherboard: left to the AGP-port, under the gfx card either is a small Sigmatel chip or an empty square. Most people won't have the chip though.
Steven Brookes found out what was wrong. Normally, the BIOS/firmware sets up some registers of the VIA that make it work (ACPI), unfortunately back then we thought it was a hardware issue.
This first version is very basic. It is playback only, has CD-in monitoring, but no volume controls etc. This will come soon in a later version.
If you're lucky enough to have the AC'97 chip, give it a try. If you'll use it, please consider making a small donation of 5 Euros to paypal@audio-evolution.com.
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This is great news for AmigaOne XE owners! Congrats to Davy and the mystery guy.
I assume that those without the chip could just send it back to their dealers or to Eyetech to get the chip replaced.
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finally we can hit the pagasos user in the head with something :-D
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Great news for the XE owners with the AC97 chip (they'll now have extra PCI slot to play with).
However, the question remains: How is it possible that this software setup issue could go unnoticed, and the problem being labelled "hw issue"? Removing the AC97 chip surely didn't generate that much savings, either.
Oh yes, VIA documentation isn't the best possible, but it is the same for everyone.
@c64_d0c
Yeah! Damn pagasos users, they just suck (what's a 'pagasos' though? :-))
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> Oh yes, VIA documentation isn't the best possible, but it is the same for everyone.
Maybe the pdf itself is. But when Gigabyte has a problem, they've got enough clout (ie. order volume at risk) to get an answer. The chip vendors typically don't want to be bothered with answering questions from a market measured in the many hundreds or low thousands.
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@billt
True. Only Apple is likely to have enough weight to get large chip manufacturers move their behind.
The documentation is the same for all the smaller PPC players, though.
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I'll bet when the chip came off, the price went up. :-D
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I wonder how many A1 owners will try to solder on the AC97 chip themselves? :-D
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problem is they probably have to match surface mounted resistors for the board to even know the chip is there. You can't just solder on a chip and expect it to just work... It's not like plugging in more ram...
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Funny... I was just thinking of starting a thread inviting a calm, civil discussion about why the A1's onboard audio didn't work. Guess that won't be neccessary now!
I think my A1 is old enough to have the chip, too (though it'll be a while before I can check, as my board is a few hundred miles away right now). Many thanks to all involved in getting this working!
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Enthilza said on AW:
"Actually, it wasn't Dave who found out about the problem, but Steven Brookes"
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@Matt_H
I think my A1 is old enough to have the chip
I have an A1-XE (7455 @ 933MHz) which I ordered on 1st November 2002, and received on 4th July 2003. I was told that the on-board sound wasn't working, and had to buy an SB128 card.
I've just had a look at the board and I don't have the sound chip. It looks like the earlier boards with 800MHz G4s probably have the sound chip fitted.
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@Argo
The news item here on Amiga.org already said:
"Steven Brookes found out what was wrong."
:-D
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Darth: most likely some will try and fry their A1:s .. but at least they have been warned for SMD-soldering not been suitable fo total novices.
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@JoannaK
True, I myself consider myself lucky that my XE still works :-P
I've been fiddling more with dip-switches, changing cpu-fan, flashing UBoot firmware, and so on, with the A1 than with any other computer I own.
:hammer:
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> most likely some will try and fry their A1:s ..
>but at least they have been warned for
>SMD-soldering not been suitable fo total novices.
Not everyone is a total novice... Besides, try finding one of these chips to order.
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No way I'd attempt this soldering job if my AmigaOne doesn't have the chip. Any non-professional electronics engineer would be crazy to do so.
If your AmigaOnes don't have the chip and you want to add it, please, for the sake of everyone's sanity, either:
A) Don't.
or
B) Bring the board to a professional shop where they have equipment for this sort of thing.
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> Professional SMD etc
What about using special SMD Socket?
Can electronic repair technician handle this socket?
examples:
http://www.antona.com/dta8000.htm
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Additional information that might be interesting that I've picked up from reading the comments thread on Amigaworld.net:
As stated, the problem was something to do with initializing parts of the southbridge and that normally this is done in the BIOS. Apparently, the next update to UBoot will do just that. The current driver performs that initialization manually.
Based on this information, I'd guess that onboard sound will also work under Linux once the new UBoot is released...?
I'm quite excited about this, as you might be able to tell :-)
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> Can electronic repair technician handle this socket?
>
>examples:
>http://www.antona.com/dta8000.htm
I'm not sure what good this would do. They don't have 48 pin qfp sockets, but look at th epricing for what they do have. US$145 for a 100 pin qfp... Plus it'd be a hack to wire the grid of pins to the qfp PCB footprint, which would be a lot more work and far far larger expense than just soldering the US$5 or less chip directly.
For kicks I do plan to get a few chips and see if I can add one to my own XE board, if I ever have time to pull my board out of the system and mess with it. I don't see it being useful in my case as I have a nice Maudio board, but for fun in seeing how hard it might be and if it works.