HowTo: Get SigmaTel STAC 9200 chipset audio working in Ubuntu Intrepid
I was asked to rebuild a friend’s old Medion laptop – you know, those ones Aldi used to sell for peanuts. It’s an AMD Turion64 based machine with NVidia GeForce Go 6100 gfx and SigmaTel STAC 9200 “High Definition” audio and a 1280×800 display. I have to admit it’s not a bad little machine.
Anyway, the default installation of Ubuntu Intrepid picks up everything except the Fn keys, wireless LAN adapter and the audio. The wireless LAN adapter has proven to be a bit of a challenge, so if I suss it out, I’ll write up about it later. Fn keys I’m not really fussed about (and neither is the laptop’s owner), but we needed the audio.
The SigmaTel STAC 9200 has a dotted history of frustration among Linux users in general, but thankfully it was fixed in Kernel 2.6.27-7 and Alsa 1.0.15. Unfortunately a vanilla installation of Ubuntu it still is unable to autodetect the hardware 100% properly (it will find it and name it, but all you get is silence), so you have to make one tiny manual adjustment before sound will work properly.
- Open up a terminal and type the following at the $ prompt:
$ sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base - This opens up the file in the GEdit text editor. Scroll to the end of the file, hit Enter to make a new line and add the following:
options snd-hda-intel model=gateway - Save your changes and close the editor.
. - Now reboot. When Ubuntu comes back, you will have working audio!
Note: Reader Mouhcine has suggested that if “model=gateway” does not work for you in step 2, try using “model=gateway-m4″ which may give you more success in Ubuntu Jaunty.
[...] Whilst rebuilding a friend’s Medion laptop, in my attempt to get the Wireless LAN adapter working, I set about trying to use ndiswrapper and the Windows drivers. Unfortunately upon rebooting, the system failed to boot, always locking up when the boot process tried to load the Windows driver. It was so bad that I wasn’t even able to boot to a recovery prompt because it still attempts to load the hardware drivers before dropping you into a root shell. [...]
Hi,
thanks for the great Tutorial. I seem to have the same Medion-Laptop, since I had the same Problems, getting the Stac9200 to work.
Did you try to Upgrade to 9.04? Your tutorial doesn’t work there for me anymore. Maybe you could post a hint, how to get it to work again.
Greets,
Sebastian
Hi Sebastian,
Unfortunately I don’t have access to that laptop currently as it belonged to a customer. I wouldn’t have thought the audio sub-system wouldn’t have changed that much between Intrepid and Jaunty, but if I get hold of the Medion again and successfully upgrade it, I’ll update this article.
Have you tried a fresh install of Jaunty to see if it picks it up properly automatically (like it’s supposed to)? I’ve found a number of previous workarounds for all sorts of things need to be “undone” when moving to Jaunty such that it may be easier to do a fresh install of Jaunty rather than an upgrade.
I tested it with a fresh install – it didn’t play sound “out of the box” and, like i said before, even your tutorial did’t help…
I’m looking forward to you getting hold of the Medion again
I’ve also the STAC9200 on a Medion MD96282
with these steps it should work:
1) sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
2) add the line: options snd-hda-intel model=gateway-m4
3) restart
4) enjoy the sound!
Cheers for that!
“add the line: options snd-hda-intel model=gateway-m4″
THIS ALSO WORKS FOR THE MEDION MD96411 !!!
Thank you so much, took me half a year to find the right option!