In my last post on this subject it was suggested that the reason sound wasn't working on this machine with MintPPC was that the Squeeze installer was installing snd-aoa instead of the correct snd-powermac module. After a lot of trial and error I found that to fix it, I simply needed to change /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base-blacklist.conf to read:

# Uncomment these entries in order to blacklist unwanted modem drivers
# blacklist snd-atiixp-modem
# blacklist snd-intel8x0m
# blacklist snd-via82xx-modem
# Comment this entry in order to load snd-pcsp driver
blacklist snd-pcsp
blacklist snd-aoa
blacklist snd-aoa-codec-tas
blacklist snd-aoa-fabric-layout
blacklist snd-aoa-i2sbus
blacklist snd-aoa-soundbus
# Comment this entry in order to load pcspkr driver

Rebooting gave me working sound, And, music CDs play as well!

That doesn't happen with DebianPPC's own final version of Squeeze. After changing the above file and installing snd-powermac, sound works, but after inserting an audio CD-ROM into the drive, Sound Juicer opens and promptly crashes. The disk doesn't eject and trying to reboot gives me a message that the File Manager is not responding, and the machine fails to complete the reboot process.

Maybe the good folks at MintPPC could get together with some of the smart people at DebianPPC to figure out why this is the case with this particular machine. Just a thought.

Tom

I have no power in the Debian community. So I can't push for changes. The best thing to do is to become part of the debian-ppc mailing list and share your patched /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base-blacklist.conf for your particular PowerMac. Even better is to file a bug report in Debian against alsa (Debian Bug report tool) and share the patched file. I think it will be solveed then in future versions.

Anyway, good that you solved it and thanks for sharing it with us here. In the end it's easier to maintain a good product in the small community that's called MintPPC

thank you tcarlson for this very useful hint and all the good work on this !

I own a PowerMac G4 Digital Audio 533MHz and was desperate to find any version of linux able to handle the sound ...
having a so called "digital audio" Mac who is mute under linux was quite ironical

If I read you right (i'm french and not so fluent in technical english)
your solution :

- works fine for Linux Mint 9 PPC
- doesn't work with the original Debian Squeeze powerpc distribution
(with its xfce or gnome xwindows system I guess)

I you read this could you please tell if this happened with the latest debian squeeze 6.01 release ?

anyway thank you very much for sharing this useful information with all !

Credit Risto Suominen and others on the Debian PPC mailing list for the idea of blacklisting the snd-aoa files. I just happen to have had a PowerMac G4 (Digital Audio) to test the concept on. Through trial and error I found the right file in /etc/modprobe.d to apply the blacklisting to. We had hoped that a patch to the installer would have been included in the Debian Squeeze release that came out in February, but it didn't happen, even with the newer 6.01 release. A bug report is filed at: 606984@bugs.debian.org. Pardon my contribution being so unreadable. I have since learned how to wrap text at 80 columns with Mac OS X Mail.

It works great on MintPPC 9 which is a much nicer, more complete implementation of xfce than the Debian version. The problem with the Debian standard GNOME desktop version is that while one can blacklist snd-aoa allowing the snd-powermac sound module to load and function correctly, when one tries to play an audio disk, Sound Juicer opens automatically and promptly crashes, crashing the File Manager as well. This is probably a separate issue, however. A lighter weight desktop like xfce is probably better on this old machine, anyway.

I continue to test the Debian daily-builds of the new Wheezy version, hoping to see some change. So far, not.

Thanks for the response.

MintPPC uses LXDE as the desktop manager. Although with XFCE you will also benefit from the more complete set of applications which are installed by default as opposed to Debian. I didn't make sure that all the installed software shows up in the menu of XFCE though. You will have to go through the list in /usr/share/applications that they all show up nicely in XFCE's menu, like they do in LXDE.

Actually the Debian bug report on this issue is at http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=606984, not what I originally posted. Cheers...

Of course. MintPPC uses LXDE, not XFCE. I misspoke... before my second cup of morning coffee.

An update on blacklisting snd-aoa files: This is only a temporary fix until Debian modifies its installer so that the correct sound module, snd-powermac, is assigned to this machine as it has already done on the PM G4 Quicksilver which used to have the same problem.

And, there is still a problem using external speakers plugged into Apple's proprietary 2.5 mm stereo mini jack sound port (oddly, not the case with Quicksilver). The internal speaker and the headphone port work fine, however.

Here is an update to getting sound to work on a Powermac G4, (Digital Audio). The stable version, version 6.0.1 of Squeeze, kernel 2.6.32-5 powerpc, already has snd-aoa blacklisted in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.local.conf The following files must be blacklisted, as well, so that it reads...

blacklist snd-aoa
blacklist snd-aoa-codec-tas
blacklist snd-aoa-fabric-layout
blacklist snd-aoa-i2sbus
blacklist snd-aoa-soundbus

A patch must also be applied (installed with dpkg -i...) to get the 2.5 mm stereo mini jack sound port working. It's available at...

http://ristosu.wippiespace.com/pub/alsa ... owerpc.deb

Thanks to Risto Suominen for coming up with the patch. Hope all this makes its way into Debian soon.

thanks tcarlson for the update on this and thanks to the debian-powerpc mailing list I was about to post this as well for you guys

I have the same problem whit my powermac digital audio, can you explain me step by step this issue?