Comment 26 for bug 1228689

Revision history for this message
Yuv (yuv) wrote :

Good news. David Henningsson replied to my comment to the people listed on the patch mentioned in comment #17. For completness, he did not just ask me to test the three scenarios in comment #18, he also asked me what driver is used on Windows for this hardware. Because it is a Microsoft driver, he said there is no need for input from Realtek nor Sony to make this hardware work in Linux.

I installed alsa-tools-gui and did the advance override with hdajackretask:
* selected codec Realtek ALC286
* clicked Advance override in the Options on the right hand side
* clicked Override under pins 0x18 and 0x21
* changed Jack detection from Present to Not present for both pins
* clicked Install boot override (Apply now did not work yet in Ubuntu because an upstream patch has not trickled down yet)
* rebooted

David wrote that now I should be able to set things up manually. I did not notice any difference in pavucontrol. I think there was a small difference in alsamixer, but I am not sure. Then, something really weird happened.

I booted the machine. General sound output (a sound recording in VLC) worked well. In pavucontrol -> Input Devices, the Internal Microphone indicator moved with sound as if it was functional. I fired up Skype. No *output*. I closed Skype. I plug in headset and there is a continuous high pitch sound. I plug in headphone, hear the VLC sound in the headphone AND over the loudspeakers simultaneously. Unplug headphone. Restart Skype. MAGIC: Skype has output AND input from the internal microphone. It all seems spurious, but it kind of works! There are still some unpolished details (such as the loudspeakers emitting sound while the headphones are plugged and the headset not working) but at this point the glass is more than half full.

With regard to the headset, I hope those manufacturers have a good reason to confuse consumers with OMTP/CTIA. I suspect my headset is OMTP. It is branded Nokia, came with a cheap pre-paid phone 2-3 years ago. Works with my chinese imported no-name Android phone and works with the SONY Vaio Pro 13 in Windows. No luck in Linux yet.