At Fri, 26 Nov 2010 02:18:03 +0500, Andrey Rahmatullin wrote:
Hello. I have an Intel H55 motherboard (ASUS P7H55-M PRO) with ALC892 sound codec and a 3.5" front panel which doesn't support newer HDA pinout. So the panel is connected in "AC97" mode and this mode is set in the BIOS setup. In 2.6.35 and earlier the panel's headphones jack was working. Now it isn't. I've bisected this down to ce503f38bdb59c9175a9076215a3ba579fad4e64 (which is present in 2.6.36), reverting it helps. I've got "Too many connections" messages without this commit, indeed, but I had no problems (though I use only a pair of speakers connected to the rear panel and headphones in the front panel).
Obviously your front-panel doesn't suit with the HD-audio, and BIOS still doesn't set the right pin defaults. That is, it was a bug of the driver that made your device working :) Now, the driver does the right thing.
A possible fix is to add quirks to override the wrong BIOS setup. Please give alsa-info.sh outputs with and without the commit to figure out the real pin configuration.
Takashi