5.3 Release and Realtek

[ctodd at chrismiller.com]

I'm running 5.3-Release amd64 on an Asus AV8 motherboard which includes
Realtek ALC850 audio chipset. I'm unable to get the system to recognize
the chipset. From the archives/man pages/manual I've :

# kldload snd_driver
kldload: can't load snd_driver: No such file or directory

Modified /boot/loader.conf to use :

sound_load="YES"
snd_driver_load="YES"

Recompiled the kernel with :

device	 sound

The last one resulted in /dev/sndstat showing up, but the contents show
no devices :

# cat /dev/sndstat
FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm)
Installed devices:

However I don't see any snd_* modules in /boot/kernel/*ko

I also noted that sys/dev/sound/pcm/ac97.c contains the following :

static const struct ac97_vendorid ac97vendorid[] = {
        { 0x414c4300, "Realtek" },

static struct ac97_codecid ac97codecid[] = {
        { 0x414c4790, 0x0f, 0, "ALC850",        0 },

At this point I'm at a loss as to where to go from here, or which kernel
module would support this chipset.

Other than that this system is a screamer. This is my first experience
with 5.3, AMD, and with the 64 bit port, so far I'm really impressed.  I
saw reports that the Marvell Gig Ethernet wasn't working for some folks,
but it worked fine for me. I chose this motherboard as it was the only one
of about three that supported socket 939 and had the Via K8T800 chipset, I
was concerned about the reports of problems with the nVidia nForce
chipset. I would have liked to have had PCI-X, but that's only available
today with nVidia. The Promise SATA raid controller (one of two different
brand controllers onboard) worked just fine.

http://www.asus.com/products/mb/socket939/a8v-d/overview.htm

Chris