Getting ALSA to Work on the Intel D201GLY2 in Linux

My home server is an Intel D201GLY2. It’s a fan-less mini-ITX with a Celeron at 1.2GHz. It supports 2GB and has 2 SATA plugs, an IDE one, on-board sound (intel8x0), on-board video, and basically everything a normal desktop computer would have. Except the sound refused to work in Gentoo.

I have everything working on it now, but for the longest time I could not get ALSA to load the sound driver module. It turns out that a BIOS update is needed for the sound to work. This is because, so I’ve read, that if there is a PCI card installed in the single PCI slot it has, the on-board sound gets inadvertently disabled. I only found about the solution via Google (as usual), but it was especially hard to find.

Running “dmesg” from the console on an affected BIOS reports a few errors. You’ll see:

codec_semaphore: semaphore is not ready [0xff][0xffffffff]

a few hundred consecutive times (no really, like 500+ times), and then:

AC’97 0 does not respond – RESET

AC’97 0 access is not valid [0xffffffff], removing mixer.

And thus, ALSA fails to load the module (although it did detect the sound chip)

When you update the BIOS, the problem is fixed. I am currently running BIOS version “LY66210M.86A.0149.2008.1203.1545″, which works fine. However, the release notes for this version do not seem to note any relevant fixes. Who would have guessed?

You can get the newest BIOS from Intel.

However, the board itself has been superseded by one with a CPU fan, and even that one I’m not too sure if it’s still being sold. But it’s a great board, if you get your hands on one.