[Virtual-pkg-base-maintainers] Bug#778469: base: No soundcards found for PowerBook G4 (PowerBook 6, 4)

[C. Jimenez]

Package: base
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

userc at powerbook6-4:~$ aplay -l
aplay: device_list:268: no soundcards found...

userc at powerbook6-4:~$ cat /proc/asound/cards
--- no soundcards ---

userc at powerbook6-4:~$ systemctl status alsa-store.service
● alsa-store.service - Store Sound Card State
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/alsa-store.service; static)
   Active: inactive (dead)

The soundcard (Snapper) was detected with kernel 3.4, but stopped being detected with later versions. The problem persists after a fresh install of Jessie [3.16.0-4-powerpc #1 Debian 3.16.7-ckt2-1 (2014-12-08) ppc GNU/Linux]. (The upgrade was necessary to fix a video bug in Wheezy, as reported here http://www.debianuserforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=3223)

I have come across several system errors:

userc at powerbook6-4:~$ dmesg
....
....
[    2.264428] i2c i2c-3: i2c-powermac: modalias failure on /uni-n at f8000000/i2c at f8001000/cereal at 1c0
....
....
[ 2357.742616] i2c i2c-0: Please use another way to instantiate your i2c_client
[ 2357.742622] i2c i2c-1: PMac Keywest Audio: attach_adapter method is deprecated
[ 2357.742627] i2c i2c-1: Please use another way to instantiate your i2c_client
....
....
[ 2357.742799] i2c i2c-19: PMac Keywest Audio: attach_adapter method is deprecated
[ 2357.742804] i2c i2c-19: Please use another way to instantiate your i2c_client

userc at powerbook6-4:~$ systemctl status systemd-modules-load.service
● systemd-modules-load.service - Load Kernel Modules
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-modules-load.service; static)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2015-02-13 23:47:23 GMT; 3h 7min ago
     Docs: man:systemd-modules-load.service(8)
           man:modules-load.d(5)
  Process: 422 ExecStart=/lib/systemd/systemd-modules-load (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
 Main PID: 422 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

My search has covered every corner of the net and while many complaint about similar problems and some propose  their own remedies none seems adjusted to my equipment.

My equipment is a PowerBook G4 12" (PowerBook6,4) from April 2004 (NewWorld Generation) with CPU 7447A 1.33 GHz and RAM 1.25 GB DDR 333 MHz. Except for the audio it runs pretty smoothly with Xfce 4.10.

userc at powerbook6-4:~$ find /proc/device-tree/ -name device-id | grep sound | xargs hexdump -e '1/4 "0x%x\n"'
0x28

I would greatly appreciate any help to re-establish sound.

Kind regards,

Carlos Jimenez


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.0
Architecture: powerpc (ppc)

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-powerpc
Locale: LANG=en_GB.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)