Sunblade 2K - Audio Issue

I did 3 things to my Sunblade 2000 today and something borked the
audio. Yesterday it was working fine, but now I get nothing but
static when I play anything through the audio system (internal
speaker, line-out, etc). I'm on Solaris 10 5/09.

I upaded my OBP to 4.16.x (from 4.5)
Installed a 2nd disk and labled it
Installed a Type 7 keyboard and mouse
Did a boot -r

I'm at a loss. I even swapped out audio modules with a spare one from
an Ultra 60 and it still just plays static.

Could really use some help.

Thanks

On Aug 17, 11:06*pm, Bart <xc68...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I did 3 things to my Sunblade 2000 today and something borked the
> audio. *Yesterday it was working fine, but now I get nothing but
> static when I play anything through the audio system (internal
> speaker, line-out, etc). *I'm on Solaris 10 5/09.
>
> I upaded my OBP to 4.16.x (from 4.5)
> Installed a 2nd disk and labled it
> Installed a Type 7 keyboard and mouse
> Did a boot -r
>
> I'm at a loss. *I even swapped out audio modules with a spare one from
> an Ultra 60 and it still just plays static.
>
> Could really use some help.
>
> Thanks

More information -

If I set the ouput volume of xmms to 1% I start to something
resembling normal sound.

So it's as if there is some sort of internal *gain* on the sound card
is maxed. On a windows machine I would look to things like PCM
volume, but the mixer looks to only have device volume.

On 2009-08-18, Bart <> wrote:
> I did 3 things to my Sunblade 2000 today and something borked the
> audio. Yesterday it was working fine, but now I get nothing but
> static when I play anything through the audio system (internal
> speaker, line-out, etc). I'm on Solaris 10 5/09.
>
> I upaded my OBP to 4.16.x (from 4.5)

My SB-2K is running 4.16.4 OB and 4.16.3 POST according to:

prtdiag -v | tail -4


> Installed a 2nd disk and labled it

O.K. I've got two 73 GB ones installed, zfs mirrored in my
SB-2K. That should have no affect on the audio device.

> Installed a Type 7 keyboard and mouse

Hmm -- I'm still using a Type 6, but I can't imagine that making
a difference.

> Did a boot -r

Do you have a /dev/audio? It should be a symlink to
/dev/sound/0, which should be a symlink to:

/devices/pci@8,700000/ebus@5/audio@1,200000:sound,audio

which should be the actual device special file.

> I'm at a loss. I even swapped out audio modules with a spare one from
> an Ultra 60 and it still just plays static.
>
> Could really use some help.

Well ... it *might* be a corrupted upgrade of OBP or POST could
cause problems. Or it could be that your "boot -r" might have gotten
rid of the special device file or something in its chain, but then you
should not have anything as output.

Your description of the sound suggests that it is really being
fed the wrong protocol. What programs are you using to play through it?
And what kind of audio file? The basic minimum would be *.au files, and
a program like /bin/audioplay.

Hmm ... are you using gnome/JDE as your window manager? I
believe that it is more tightly tied to the audio device than the CDE
window manager, which is what I used. Have you tried logging out and
logging in as another user -- root if nothing else -- to see whether
that changes the behavior?

And I didn't know that the sound modules were interchangeable
with the Ultra-60 ones, but if you get the same results, they apparently
are.

Good Luck,
DoN.

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On 2009-08-18, Bart <> wrote:
> On Aug 17, 11:06*pm, Bart <xc68...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I did 3 things to my Sunblade 2000 today and something borked the
>> audio. *Yesterday it was working fine, but now I get nothing but
>> static when I play anything through the audio system (internal
>> speaker, line-out, etc). *I'm on Solaris 10 5/09.
>>
>> I upaded my OBP to 4.16.x (from 4.5)
>> Installed a 2nd disk and labled it
>> Installed a Type 7 keyboard and mouse
>> Did a boot -r
>>
>> I'm at a loss. *I even swapped out audio modules with a spare one from
>> an Ultra 60 and it still just plays static.
>>
>> Could really use some help.
>>
>> Thanks
>
> More information -
>
> If I set the ouput volume of xmms to 1% I start to something
> resembling normal sound.
>
> So it's as if there is some sort of internal *gain* on the sound card
> is maxed. On a windows machine I would look to things like PCM
> volume, but the mixer looks to only have device volume.

Again -- what is the source of your sound? It could be that the
source was recorded overdriven -- or in another protocol, and is not
being converted properly to feed to /dev/audio. Your static can usually
be obtained by catting a text file to /dev/audio. This command:

cat /tmp/junque > /dev/audio

gives a short burst of static while the file /tmp/junque is about a 412
byte text file.

However, doing the same thing with a ".au" file produces the
sound which I expected. If you get one of the Windows sound formats, it
will almost certainly need to be passed through a conversion utility
before playing.

Good Luck,
DoN.

--
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--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Well the source is anything. But to be specific I use xmms to stream
various stations and that has always worked flawlessly. But even
trying to pay any of the demo .au's, Flash videos (you tube) that all
is just mostly static. Also just tested using the Java media player
and a single .au demo file. All this stuff worked flawlessly just a
couple of days ago. I'm starting to think hardware but I can rule
out the sound board. I mean what could possible fail hardware wise
that wouldn't be on the sound daughter card?

> I did 3 things to my Sunblade 2000 today and something borked the
> audio. Yesterday it was working fine, but now I get nothing but
> static when I play anything through the audio system (internal
> speaker, line-out, etc). I'm on Solaris 10 5/09.

I'm running a B1000, booting every day. Every once in a while
I get this "static", too (say once a month), but usually it's gone
after the next powercycle.

Uwe

On 2009-08-19, Bart <> wrote:
> Well the source is anything. But to be specific I use xmms to stream
> various stations and that has always worked flawlessly. But even
> trying to pay any of the demo .au's, Flash videos (you tube) that all
> is just mostly static. Also just tested using the Java media player
> and a single .au demo file. All this stuff worked flawlessly just a
> couple of days ago. I'm starting to think hardware but I can rule
> out the sound board. I mean what could possible fail hardware wise
> that wouldn't be on the sound daughter card?

Well ... I was wondering whether the audio chip was actually
*on* that card, so I grabbed the spare that I have and did a web lookup
of the CRYSTAL CS4231A-KQ chip and discovered that it really is the
sound chip. The long one at the top of the board appears to be the
amplifier which drives the speaker output and headphone outputs.

Nope -- it is only for the built-in speaker -- it is a mono
amplifier.

Anyway -- one thing which could produce the effects which you
are describing is if one of the outputs is shorted -- line output,
headphone output or external speaker output perhaps.

Have you tried the internal speaker with *all* cables unplugged?
If that works properly, it is time to get out a digital multimeter and
check the various connectors to see whether any of them are shorted, or
even just very low in impedance. I do find it hard to imagine how any
of the changes which you have described could produce the failure mode
you have. I'm sure that you fully unplugged the audio cables at least
once, if you swapped audio cards.

You didn't disconnect and reconnect any of the power supply
cables did you? IIRC, all you changed was adding a disk drive, changing
the keyboard, and one other thing which I forget.

Good Luck,
DoN.

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--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Yeah, it's a weird one. Got tired of messing with it so I went down
and picked up a soundblaster audigy from the used computer store and
installed it with the OSS drivers and I have sound again. I pulled
the CS4231 card so it wouldn't load drivers. Only thing I didn't try
was to reinstall solaris but that would have helped either.

The audio card is on what sun refers to as the zbus. Serial and
parallel are also handled by the zbus so one day, I might see if those
are still working. I think I can rule out shorts since I have 2 cards
that exibit the same behavior.

One other modification I made to this Sunblade that may be rare is
that I've modified my XVR-1200 to use the bottom 66Mhz slot. I did
that a couple of months ago and I know sound was working afterwards
but just want to mention it in case anyone stumbles across this post
years from now. The 66Mhz slot is shared with the disk controller and
is isolated from the other PCI bus and the zBus so I can't image that
had anything to do with it but who knows. It's definatley not
supported by Sun so maybe for reasons other than the one they gave
(physical limitation).

On Aug 19, 8:48*pm, Bart <xc68...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, it's a weird one. *Got tired of messing with it so I went down
> and picked up a soundblaster audigy from the used computer store and
> installed it with the OSS drivers and I have sound again. *I pulled
> the CS4231 card so it wouldn't load drivers. *Only thing I didn't try
> was to reinstall solaris but that would have helped either.
>
> The audio card is on what sun refers to as the zbus. *Serial and
> parallel are also handled by the zbus so one day, I might see if those
> are still working. *I think I can rule out shorts since I have 2 cards
> that exibit the same behavior.
>
> One other modification I made to this Sunblade that may be rare is
> that I've modified my XVR-1200 to use the bottom 66Mhz slot. *I did
> that a couple of months ago and I know sound was working afterwards
> but just want to mention it in case anyone stumbles across this post
> years from now. *The 66Mhz slot is shared with the disk controller and
> is isolated from the other PCI bus and the zBus so I can't image that
> had anything to do with it but who knows. *It's definatley not
> supported by Sun so maybe for reasons other than the one they gave
> (physical limitation).

opps...make that "ebus" not zbus.

On 2009-08-20, Bart <> wrote:
> Yeah, it's a weird one. Got tired of messing with it so I went down
> and picked up a soundblaster audigy from the used computer store and
> installed it with the OSS drivers and I have sound again. I pulled
> the CS4231 card so it wouldn't load drivers. Only thing I didn't try
> was to reinstall solaris but that would have helped either.

I agree that it sounds more like a hardware problem somewhere --
though you might try both cards in the Ultra 60 (one at a time, of
course) if it is free for experimentation. That would be a way of
testing the cards independent of the Sun Blade 2K itself.

> The audio card is on what sun refers to as the zbus.

O.K. That I did not know.

> Serial and
> parallel are also handled by the zbus so one day, I might see if those
> are still working.

A worthwhile test -- though if there are problems in the zbus I
would be surprised if you can get *anything* from the audio card.

> I think I can rule out shorts since I have 2 cards
> that exibit the same behavior.

Not if the shorts are in the cables or what the cables connect
to at the other end. That could invoke the same behavior from two
perfectly good cards. Or -- under certain circumstances, it could
damage two perfectly good cards.

> One other modification I made to this Sunblade that may be rare is
> that I've modified my XVR-1200 to use the bottom 66Mhz slot. I did
> that a couple of months ago and I know sound was working afterwards
> but just want to mention it in case anyone stumbles across this post
> years from now. The 66Mhz slot is shared with the disk controller and
> is isolated from the other PCI bus and the zBus so I can't image that
> had anything to do with it but who knows. It's definatley not
> supported by Sun so maybe for reasons other than the one they gave
> (physical limitation).

I agree that it should not create problems with the audio card.

Good luck,
DoN.

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Email: <> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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