[crossposting to alsa-devel as adviced in ALSA-Configuration.txt]
The model option is _the_ important option for HD-audio driver. It overrides the configuration preset. As default, the driver reads the PCI (subsystem) IDs to identify which configuration preset to use. If not found, the driver does a guess work from the BIOS setup in most cases.
Now, since many laptops are shipped with broken BIOS and the guess work is imperfect, you often face the famous problem -- "sound doesn't work" (great words that explain everything). Then you can pass model option for the preset designed for anohter hardware (e.g. model=thinkpad) to make the driver probe as if it's such a hardware. If you are lucky, your device is similar with others, and the driver works with such a preset. If not, we'd need to hack another preset for matching with your device.
The list of available model option is found in ALSA-Configuration.txt.
So it seems the Dell XPS M1710 isn't yet listed among the known models and also does not seem to be detected properly (as of hg20070816).
'lspci -v' gives: ... 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01) Subsystem: Dell Unknown device 01ce Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21 Memory at efffc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [60] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable- Capabilities: [70] Express Unknown type IRQ 0 Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [130] Unknown (5) ...
'lspci -nv' gives: ... 00:1b.0 Class 0403: 8086:27d8 (rev 01) Subsystem: 1028:01ce Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21 Memory at efffc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [60] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable- Capabilities: [70] Express Unknown type IRQ 0 Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [130] Unknown (5) ...
Anything else I could do to help getting it (fully) supported ?
Best, Michael