Comment 3 for bug 445889

Okay, I've got the situation slightly improved...

I read HD-audio.txt in the kernel documentation (http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sound/alsa/HD-Audio.txt) and it mentioned the great frequency of problems with internal speaker outputs with this driver.

It explained that the following /var/log/messages error is not a huge deal *IF* the BIOS is correctly configured:

  hda_codec: Unknown model for XXXXXX, trying auto-probe from BIOS...

Well, presumably my BIOS is *not* correctly configured, since neither Linux nor Windows can use the internal speaker with the default settings.

So, as suggested by HD-audio.txt, I tried different "model" parameter values with snd-hda-intel (list of choices is here: http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sound/alsa/HD-Audio-Models.txt). I tried the "model=basic" option listed for the ALC269 codec.

And now the internal speakers work!!! *But* there are other problems:

(1) When I plug headphones into the heaphone jack, the internal speakers are not muted. There is apparently no way to get this to happen automatically with the basic model. (Pulseaudio gets confused if I try to tweak the front vs. headphone settings separately via Alsamixer... but I'll call that a Pulseaudio bug.)

(2) Alsamixer doesn't know about the correct microphone input options for this computer

(3) There's a little red LED inside the headphone jack which is supposed to be used to transmit digital audio using IEC958 or S/PDIF. With the "model=auto" setting, I can turn this LED on or off by enabling or disabling "digital audio" via the mixer controls. But with the "model=basic" setting, the LED stays off. Although I don't have the equipment to use digital audio myself, I assume that it wouldn't work with "model=basic".

SUMMARY: Basically, it seems that there is a BIOS problem on this computer that does not set up the correct defaults to allow the internal speakers to work. So probably a new snd-hda-intel "model profile" should be constructed for this notebook. I would be happy to explore this further, if someone would give me advice on how to get started doing it. Thanks!!