No FOSS drivers for Dell e521 / Nvidia MCP51 High Definition Audio

[Michael ODonnell]

> Check out
> http://www.archivesat.com/Linux_audio_users/thread1284163.htm
>
> Perhaps it relates to your issue, while not directly.  Almost sounds
> like alsa is saying, 'Yes, I see some kind of soundcard, but I
> don't know Poo about it', and providing very minimal capabilities.
> alsaconf may help.

Thanks for the suggestions - I had a look there last night but
found no solutions, unfortunately.  I also grabbed the recently
released 2.6.20 sources and diffed those drivers against
those from the latest ALSA and also against my 2.6.18 kernel.
Some of the diffs seemed tantalizingly relevant so I built
2.6.20 and tried it, but I'm no better off.       >-/

BTW, if you try 2.6.20 and you have SATA drives be aware that
"make oldconfig" using a 2.6.18 config file will appear to
work but actually leaves your SATA gear unconfigured, one
symptom of which is that your kernel will appear to be happily
booting and then pause, waiting forever for your root device.
The fix is to use something like "make menuconfig" where you'll
see that all the SATA stuff now lives in its own submenu where
you need to configure the appropriate items by hand.