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

[Michael ODonnell]

Just a heads-up to anybody who might be tempted to buy (as I did)
the heavily promoted Dell e521 for use as a Linux box: it turns
out that the motherboard has a lot of Nvidia stuff on it, and we
know how those people don't play nice w/FOSS.

I knew in advance that it'd have the Nvidia graphics HW but I wish
I'd done my homework better because I might not have bought this
unit if I'd realized how heavily Nvidia-centric it is:

  00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
  00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 0 (rev a2)
  00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 1 (rev a2)
  00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 5 (rev a2)
  00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 4 (rev a2)
  00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
  00:00.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 3 (rev a2)
  00:00.7 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 2 (rev a2)
  00:02.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
  00:03.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
  00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
  00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a2)
  00:09.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
  00:0a.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 LPC Bridge (rev a3)
  00:0a.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP51 SMBus (rev a3)
  00:0a.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Memory Controller 0 (rev a3)
  00:0b.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
  00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
  00:0e.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev a1)
  00:0f.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev a1)
  00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
  00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
  00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
  00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
  00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
  00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
  04:07.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)

Naturally, the pre-inflicted Windows XP Home works fine and manages
all the HW properly but it appears that there is currently no
(or darned little) Linux support for the high-def audio.
 
OK, I'll stop whining now...           >-/