What is the Aspire One's sound card?

Hi all,

I've read the specs on the Aspire One and I'm considering buying one. But there is one thing not mentioned in Acer's documentation and not mentioned by others in an evening's worth of searching for it on this and other sites, nor through search engines:

What is the Aspire One's sound card? If anyone knows the name and model numbers of the card or chips and the manufacturer, I would appreciate knowing so I can research it myself. If anybody does know the sound card and has confirmed that there is a working DOS sound driver for it, that would be even more helpful (even 8-bit SB-compatible sound drivers would be acceptable).

Not to be rude, but if someone reading this is planning to say, "Why would anyone use DOS?", have the decency not to say anything. Others' inability to fathom a need for DOS is not a failing on my part. If you must know, all NT-based Windows versions are incapable of stably running certain DOS programs in a command shell, so I run DOS cleanly in a different partition.

As a side note, has anyone had success running an AVerMedia TV cable device on the Aspire One through a USB port? My current AVerMedia device is PCMCIA so it obviously (and regrettably) won't work with an A-One, and I'd have to buy the USB version for XP/Vista.

 

dont know the sound card but its an Realtek...go to driver section and look in FTP the driver should say the card model...

 

There's something called DosBox under windows that emulates the environment and it works rather well with very old games, you can check the compatibility list on thier website
http://www.dosbox.com

It's open source and free

Edit: There's also FreeDOS, an open source implementation of DOS with added functionalities

 

Realtek ALC268 Azadia Codec and Amplifier G1441

 

I'll make one general reply to all, rather than three:

To oinquer: Thank you for at least trying, though I could not find the info or it was not where you suggested. It's appreciated anyway.

To goofball: That was exactly the sort of detail I was looking for, so I thank you very much. Now the question is whether RealTek produces a driver. Unfortunately, they're a very arrogant company and refuse to answer questions from users of their hardware, and in the past have refused to make DOS drivers nor state any compatibility or specifications.

And as for Daijoubu, he did exactly what I said I didn't want, arrogantly and ignorantly speaking instead of staying quiet. Why the unthinking assumption that I don't already know about DOSBox? Windows crashes DOSBox with my programs, even in a Win98 installation, just as it crashes command shells. And as I said the first time (which should be enough for most people), I want DOS to run cleanly, with no Windows in the background. Anyone who knows how to run DOS natively is going to know about FreeDOS, PTS DOS, PC DOS 7 or even older versions from Win95/98, and it going to know what he's doing. I asked for information about hardware, not opinions.

 

Sorry if you find my reply arrogant, I only gave suggestions not opinions, I didn't mention anything about running DOS itself and I can understand that you must have your own reasons to use it. One doesn't need to be overprotective of thier OS, I'm just trying to help and I'm being called names :|

How is one supposed to know the level of knowledge of someone else, I couldn't have guessed that you knew already. Nor find it offending.

Finding your answer shouldn't have been too difficult, one could see which driver the Aspire One use like oinquer suggested.
What I do not understand is that your took the extend to register on the forum to write a message instead of finding the answer yourself, I do not know how long you searched but I hate peoples who wants to be spoon fed. Not saying you're one of them but if you did your homework properly, you probably won't be asking it here.

Being arrogant would have been "use the search button" or use google, which actually would have given your answer, searching for "aspire one" onboard audio for example

As for RealTek being arrogant, the datasheet and reference design based on the ALC268 or any of there chipsets are publicly available and they have no monetary reasons to write and support older OS.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/prod ... ProdID=140

Now writing a proper driver off these specifications is another story...

PS: Have you though about using VirtualPC? Less than ideal solution but I guess you must know about it already

 

Hi, There!

I bought an AAO about 10 days ago and I also want to play some music as a DJ.
(I am working on Linux.)
But I am completely unsatisfied with the audio quality of the AAO.
In comparison to several other Line-Out sources (Soundcards, MP3 Players, high quality CD Players, ...)
the AAO sound output (the headphone output) has way too much treble and almost no bass.

Question 1:
Can anybody verify that the sound is quite "screeching" in comparison to other sources?

According to
$ lspci
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel 82801G (ICH7 Family) HD Audio Controller: Realtek ALC662G/228 (rev 02)
there is a Realtek ALC662G/228 attached to the Intel chipset.

Thanks to Realtek's good website, it's possible to download a Datasheet as well
as a Reference Design:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/search/defaul ... ord=alc662

Well... just have a look at the green comments in the Datasheet. The output filters
(as well as the input filters) might have been truncated to save some cents in
the higher quality components.

Question 2:
I didn't open my AAO yet. (Still think about sending it back.)
But if someone has already can you take some picture of the Realtek
chipset along with the filter components and put it in here or send it to me
(cullinan /at\ rocketmail.com)?

I want to check if I can modify the circuit to improve the audio quality of the AAO.

Question 3:
I didn't read the full datasheet, but it might be possible that the ALC662 has internal
sound control circuitry which isn't programmed correctly. As said before, I am using
Linux where I experienced the bad sound.
I am curious if Windows users also also having this problem?

Question 4:
Are there some Linux driver wizards around to checkout the source code if the chip
is programmed correctly? Where is the Linpus Kernel Source?

Hopefully, I am not the only one with this bad audio experience. Then I would
know I got a broken AAO.

Thank you so far, best regards,
ckoller

BTW:
I am a hardware designer and also did some complex embedded computer hardware designs in the past.
I don't hesitate to solder any tiny chips (have access to a good rework station). And a friend of mine
does professional analog design...

 

Here are the pictures I took when I had mine opened, don't know if it's any helpful

http://zubu.ca/aa1/overall_pcb.jpg
http://zubu.ca/aa1/acl268.jpg

Someone else did mention that he was hearing a delayed feedback under linux but I can't find the topic at the moment.
Under windows, I didn't experience any notable distortion while using earphones

Edit: here, happens only under linpus apparently
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1680&p=26469&hilit=alsa#p26469

And the sources: ftp://[email protected]/Aspire_One_Linpus_Linux/

 

Hello, Daijoubu!

Thank you very much for your pictures and for the pointer to the
post to the Linpus related problem.
I think I don't need to put my notebook back... since it's basically
possible to fix the components if necessary. And it doesn't sound
like a hardware design flaw if others didn't experience the same
problem. (I mean, it's really obvious to hear the bad audio quality.)

I'll have a look at the alsa driver sources asap and compile a new
kernel. I also hope that as much acer specific patches get posted
upstream that most of the important things will be included in the
vanilla linux kernel asap. I can also send some patches to LKML.

Best greets to all the AAO hackers!

C.K.

 

Hmmm...you should be able to update the ALSA drivers alone without rebuilding the kernel! Just make sure you have your kernel headers installed, plus of course whatever else is needed to compile C source. Then just download, extract, compile and install the latest ALSA source package... This will overwrite the ALSA modules that are in the kernel with your newer versions. I was reading that the very latest additions to the as yet unreleased 1.0.18 version adds support for the AAO, but what that means in reality in unknown to me....