Solved Mac Pro FreeBSD + sound

J

jrushford

I have this 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 that I was no-longer using (it won't run OS X beyond Lion) so I tried installing FreeBSD 10.2 on it. I got FreeBSD installed and it boots up fine after having blessed the ZFS boot partitions on the mirrored drives. Anyway, I thought I'd use it as a NAS once I fill up the drive bays with larger disks and it already has a ton of memory for ZFS (I picked up 32GB of Ram on ebay for it for $65). It turns out though that it makes a pretty nice X workstation too after having installed Xorg and Xfce. I'll probably use it for both.

All the hardware seems well supported except for wifi and sound. I've solved the networking issue by hard wiring to a 100gb switch on my LAN. Now, I'm trying to get the sound to work. Has anyone here had any experience getting the sound to work on old Apple Hardware? I've searched Google and have tried some things but I can't seem to get it working. Here is the output from cat /dev/sndstat:
Code: 
Installed devices:
pcm0: <Realtek ALC889A (Analog)> (play/rec)
pcm1: <Realtek ALC889A (Rear Digital)> (play/rec) default
pcm2: <Realtek ALC889A (Front Analog Headphones)> (play)
pcm3: <Realtek ALC889A (Rear Analog Line-out)> (play)

From one suggestion I ran across in a Google search, I added this to /boot/device.hints but this doesn't seem to help:
Code: 
hint.hdaa.0.gpio_config="0=clear 1=clear"
hint.hdaa.0.config="ovref"

The sound hardware is supported by FreeBSD but, I just can't get it to work and was wondering if anyone here might have an idea.

regards
John
 
As you can see from the sndstat output, the default has been set to the digital output at the rear. If you have connected your audio to the analog outputs you'll need to change the default.

sysctl hw.snd.default_unit=0

You can set it permanently by adding the sysctl(8) to /etc/sysctl.conf.
 
Thanks very much, this was very helpful. For some reason, the Rear analog Line-out and pcm3 and Analog pcm0 aren't producing any audio output when I change the default_unit to 3 and 0 respectively. However, using the information you supplied, I am getting audio output from the front panel headphone jack pcm2 after setting the default_unit=2. I have my PC speakers plugged into the front headphone jack and am getting good sound. I'll continue to play with the rear analog line out.

Thanks very much, you were very helpful.

Best regards
John
 
Did anyone with a FreeBSD on an Intel Mac Pro ever get fan speed control / heat management working on BSD on the Mac?

I managed to get NAS4Free installed on an IDE drive on the spare IDE channel under the DVD drive, as an embedded image.
Tried both other boot loaders, (rEFIt and rEFInd and they showed a FreeBSD icon but would not boot).
Did not 'bless' any drives and it does just boot.
But sometimes it randomly fails or hangs and wondering if that is heat / hardware related.


It is a Mac Pro 1,1 Quad Core 2.66 and after a few minutes of running it starts 'freezing' up ..and I think the issue is heat related.
The RAM gets almost too hot to touch.
Fans only run at minimum speed and never speed up, and the CPU core temps on Processor 0 go up to about 45 degC, where as the other processor cores are down to around 28degC

I know I do not have FreeBSD, but have NAS4Free, but no one has been able to help or even answered my questions over on the NAS4Free forums, so I though that maybe there is some FreeBSD fan control deamon that needs to be installed that is not natively in NAS4Free.

Anyone have any ideas?



I am going to cross post this..yes I know..bad form...on to other threads I find with Mac Pro users ..as we seem to be so few and far between. I want to get as much coverage as possible. I have been 3-4 weeks working on this before posting any posts on any forums, and I am now starting to think I am just going to trash the Mac if I can't get it running with NAS4Free
 
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