RS880 Audio Device (Radeon HD 4200) HDMI sound interface difficulties

[Gregory P. Ennis]

On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 4:54 PM, Gregory P. Ennis <PoMec at pomec.net> wrote:
>> Does anyone know if there are special drivers that are needed for this.
>
> I don't know if this is one of the ATI cards that falls in the
> unsupported category or not, but there are definitely ATI HDMI
> cards out there with no HDMI audio support in current released kernels.
>
> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAyNDY
>
> possibly includes your card (not sure though).
>
> You may have to install the ATI proprietary drivers (if they'll
> work with F16, which is also iffy :-).
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Tom,
>
> Thanks for the response.  I was afraid of that.  I don't think my skill
> set allows me to safely try out their drivers.  I already tried to
> install akmod-catalyst and ruined my gui.  Thanks for your suggestion,
> Looks like I may need to wait on a 3.3 kernel unless someone else has
> unlocked this problem.

Actually, the kernel has HDMI audio support for your particular card,
it's just disabled by default.  Add "radeon.audio=1" to your kernel
command line to enable it.

Hat-tip to the always awesome Arch wiki for this information.

-T.C.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

T.C.

Thanks for the advice.  I added the "radeon.audio=1" to the kernel
command line, but the hdmi still does not function.  I tried to add the
command to ./grub/menu.lst but looks like that file is not present in
F16.  I took a look at my install logs and found the following :


Dec 31 12:45:59 Re02 kernel: [    1.907760] [drm] Radeon display
connector VGA-1: No monitor connected or invalid EDID
Dec 31 12:45:59 Re02 kernel: [    1.959789] [drm] Radeon display
connector LVDS-1: Found valid EDID
Dec 31 12:45:59 Re02 kernel: [    2.065434] [drm] Radeon display
connector HDMI-A-1: Found valid EDID
Dec 31 12:45:59 Re02 kernel: [    2.065514] [drm] radeon: power
management initialized

Dec 31 12:45:59 Re02 kernel: [    3.199259] fbcon: radeondrmfb (fb0) is
primary device
Dec 31 12:45:59 Re02 kernel: [    3.246416] Console: switching to colour
frame buffer device 170x48
Dec 31 12:45:59 Re02 kernel: [    3.258411] fb0: radeondrmfb frame
buffer device
Dec 31 12:45:59 Re02 kernel: [    3.258416] drm: registered panic
notifier3.1.6-1.fc16.x86_64
Dec 31 12:45:59 Re02 kernel: [    3.258441] [drm] Initialized radeon
2.11.0 20080528 for 0000:01:05.0 on minor 0

The kernel is this machine is :
3.1.6-1.fc16.x86_64

It looks to me like this kernel is recognizing the hdmi interface, but
hdmi sound is still not working.  

Thanks again for your help!!!

Greg