HowTo: Get SigmaTel STAC 9200 chipset audio working in Ubuntu Intrepid

by HyRax February 24, 2009

I was asked to rebuild a friend’s old Medion laptop – you know, those ones Aldi used to sell for peanuts. It’s an AMD Turion64 based machine with NVidia GeForce Go 6100 gfx and SigmaTel STAC 9200 “High Definition” audio and a 1280×800 display. I have to admit it’s not a bad little machine.

Anyway, the default installation of Ubuntu Intrepid picks up everything except the Fn keys, wireless LAN adapter and the audio. The wireless LAN adapter has proven to be a bit of a challenge, so if I suss it out, I’ll write up about it later. Fn keys I’m not really fussed about (and neither is the laptop’s owner), but we needed the audio.

The SigmaTel STAC 9200 has a dotted history of frustration among Linux users in general, but thankfully it was fixed in Kernel 2.6.27-7 and Alsa 1.0.15. Unfortunately a vanilla installation of Ubuntu it still is unable to autodetect the hardware 100% properly (it will find it and name it, but all you get is silence), so you have to make one tiny manual adjustment before sound will work properly.

Open up a terminal and type the following at the $ prompt:

$ sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base
This opens up the file in the GEdit text editor. Scroll to the end of the file, hit Enter to make a new line and add the following:

options snd-hda-intel model=gateway
Save your changes and close the editor.
Now reboot. When Ubuntu comes back, you will have working audio!

Note: Reader Mouhcine has suggested that if “model=gateway” does not work for you in step 2, try using “model=gateway-m4″ which may give you more success in Ubuntu Jaunty.