Auto detection of audio hardware and driver loading on powerpc (was: Sound drivers detected on Mac Mini and G5, but not Powermac G4)

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> writes:

> How can I diagnose, then, why the ‘snd-aoa’ modules are loaded on this
> machine (with no explicit request or configuration that I know of),
> and why the ‘snd-powermac’ module is not loaded?

I'm still baffled by this. If ‘snd-powermac’ would work on this machine,
why is that not the module that gets loaded?

I have installed other Apple machines where sound is not working; they
are not models listed as working with ‘snd-aoa’, so I can only assume
‘snd-powermac’ is also correct for those machines. I don't have access
to the specific machines right now to check, but my question now is more
general:

What needs to be done so the Debian-supplied kernel will automatically
*detect* which audio drivers are required, and load the modules at boot
time?

Perhaps I'm coddled by working with x86 hardware, but I would hope the
era of manually fiddling with ‘/etc/modules.conf’ (or other manual
dicking around to tell the kernel what hardware is in the system) would
be long gone, especially for such common hardware as audio chipsets in
Apple machines.

-- 
 \      “Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.” —Henry |
  `\                                                        L. Mencken |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney