[Alsa-user] VT1818S no sound

[Alan G. <al...@pt...>]

I have been unsuccessful getting sound from a motherboard (ASUS M4A87TD)
running Debian Squeeze with kernel 2.6.32-5-amd64 and packages
alsa-base 1.0.23+dfsg-2 and alsa-utils 1.0.23-3.  I am in the audio
group.  lspci shows:
 00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) (rev 40)
Speakers are plugged into the analog output in the back.  I tried both audio
BIOS settings: HD and AC97.

aplay -l shows:
 **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
 card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: VT1818S Analog [VT1818S Analog]
   Subdevices: 2/2
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
   Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
 card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: VT1818S Digital [VT1818S Digital]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
 card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

alsamixer is turned all the way up for:
 Card: HDA ATI SB
 Chip: VIA VT1818S
 Item: Master Front [dB gain: 12.00, 12.00]
but aplay and speaker-test are silent.

alsactl init gives:
 Unknown hardware: "HDA-Intel" "VIA VT1818S" "HDA:11060440,10438416,00100000"
  "0x1002" "0x4383"
 Hardware is initialized using a guess method

I installed the backported kernel 2.6.39-bpo.2-amd64 because the file
/usr/share/doc/linux-doc-2.6.39/Documentation/sound/alsa/HD-Audio-Models.txt.gz
has:
 VIA VT17xx/VT18xx/VT20xx
 ========================
   auto          BIOS setup (default)
added at the end.  It made no difference.
alsamixer, F2 /proc/asound/version says:
 Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.24

I tried booting the live distribution grml64_2011.12 .  It has kernel
3.1.0-grml-amd64 and packages alsa-base 1.0.23+dfsg-4 and alsa-utils
1.0.24.2-4.  With this, alsactl init gives:
 Found hardware: "HDA-Intel" "VIA VT1818S" "HDA:11060440,10438416,00100000"
  "0x1002" "0x4383"
 Hardware is initialized using a generic method
While grml is booting, it plays few tones to the speaker, proving the
audio hardware is working, but after that, aplay, speaker-test are still
silent.

I uploaded the results of alsa-input.sh to:
http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=7984f940cfbbbb481d72e00c5a35e54a5dd5a2c7

Any ideas?