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From: Ronald Cole on 29 May 2006 19:22
nospam(a)needed.com (Paul) writes:
> The Sonata seven wires minus RET-R and RET-L, should fit with
> the five pins listed in the Asus manual for AC-97.
>
> The history of this, is contained in some formfactors.org documents.
> The problem is, when Intel wrote their HDaudio spec, they
> decided to redefine the AC-97 pinout of the 2x5. If Intel wanted
> a few sense pins, it would have been better to just add another
> small header with the necessary signals on it. That would be less
> confusing for the consumer (of course, DIY builders are insignificant
> in the minds of the big companies).
>
> These two docs, somewhere around page 19, contain some info.
>
> (AC-97 header - archived doc)
> http://web.archive.org/web/20040407073715/http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/fpio_design_guideline.pdf
>
> (HDaudio header)
> http://www.formfactors.org/developer\specs\A2928604-005.pdf
>
> I don't know what the BIOS setting "Front Panel Support Type"
> is doing. To figure that out, I'd have to dump the registers
> for the audio, to see if the setting makes any difference to the
> register contents. Because otherwise, I don't see how the BIOS
> is going to be doing anything to the audio. It must be a
> parameter passing thing of some sort. But what would they
> be passing ?

Just a FYI, but for this mainboard, there are problems with the
RealTek 1.27 HD Audio control panel included on the CD. After
installing WinXP SP2 and installing all the drivers on the motherboard
CD, things were fine... until I applied all the updates at Microsoft,
then the HD Audio control panel would hang and never finish starting
up. And it would still be hung at shutdown.

So I went over to RealTek's website and downloaded their 1.37 drivers
and installed them. All of a sudden Skype complains that there's a
program attempting to access it and asks me what I want it to do about
it. So I chose "don't allow" and then on every reboot, Skype threw up
a couple of windows telling me that it disallowed access to some
program. Well, I determined that it was a program called
"SkyTel.exe", which the RealTek 1.37 driver package installed, and
which it didn't remove when I subsequently uninstalled it!! I was
able to find the RealTek 1.36 driver package and it didn't have that
file in it. Things have been working well after installing the
RealTek 1.36 driver package.

Googling for "skytel.exe" didn't yield any information about what it
was or why it wanted to use Skype. And the RealTek 1.37 release notes
just lists it and doesn't bother to explain it. Have you seen this
before?

--
Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412
Ronald Cole <ronald(a)forte-intl.com> Phone: (760) 499-9142
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My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084 4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B
From: Paul on 29 May 2006 23:16
In article <m3lkskfmb2.fsf(a)yakisoba.forte-intl.com>, Ronald Cole
<ronald(a)forte-intl.com> wrote:

> nospam(a)needed.com (Paul) writes:
> > The Sonata seven wires minus RET-R and RET-L, should fit with
> > the five pins listed in the Asus manual for AC-97.
> >
> > The history of this, is contained in some formfactors.org documents.
> > The problem is, when Intel wrote their HDaudio spec, they
> > decided to redefine the AC-97 pinout of the 2x5. If Intel wanted
> > a few sense pins, it would have been better to just add another
> > small header with the necessary signals on it. That would be less
> > confusing for the consumer (of course, DIY builders are insignificant
> > in the minds of the big companies).
> >
> > These two docs, somewhere around page 19, contain some info.
> >
> > (AC-97 header - archived doc)
> >
http://web.archive.org/web/20040407073715/http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/fpio_design_guideline.pdf
> >
> > (HDaudio header)
> > http://www.formfactors.org/developer\specs\A2928604-005.pdf
> >
> > I don't know what the BIOS setting "Front Panel Support Type"
> > is doing. To figure that out, I'd have to dump the registers
> > for the audio, to see if the setting makes any difference to the
> > register contents. Because otherwise, I don't see how the BIOS
> > is going to be doing anything to the audio. It must be a
> > parameter passing thing of some sort. But what would they
> > be passing ?
>
> Just a FYI, but for this mainboard, there are problems with the
> RealTek 1.27 HD Audio control panel included on the CD. After
> installing WinXP SP2 and installing all the drivers on the motherboard
> CD, things were fine... until I applied all the updates at Microsoft,
> then the HD Audio control panel would hang and never finish starting
> up. And it would still be hung at shutdown.
>
> So I went over to RealTek's website and downloaded their 1.37 drivers
> and installed them. All of a sudden Skype complains that there's a
> program attempting to access it and asks me what I want it to do about
> it. So I chose "don't allow" and then on every reboot, Skype threw up
> a couple of windows telling me that it disallowed access to some
> program. Well, I determined that it was a program called
> "SkyTel.exe", which the RealTek 1.37 driver package installed, and
> which it didn't remove when I subsequently uninstalled it!! I was
> able to find the RealTek 1.36 driver package and it didn't have that
> file in it. Things have been working well after installing the
> RealTek 1.36 driver package.
>
> Googling for "skytel.exe" didn't yield any information about what it
> was or why it wanted to use Skype. And the RealTek 1.37 release notes
> just lists it and doesn't bother to explain it. Have you seen this
> before?

Nope. Never heard of it.

looking inside the .exe file, I see:

CALL ROUTING
CALL RINGING
CALL MISSED
CALL REFUSED
CALL FAILED
CALL INPROGRESS
HANDLEOUTGOING_PSTN
CALL FINISHED
SkypeControl
API AttachSkypeControl
API DiscoverRealtek
SkyTel\SkyTel.ini
ENABLE User has explicitly denied access to client
CSuperOfficeSkypeDlg::WindowProcAPI is not available at the moment.
For example, this happens when no user is currently logged in
CSuperOfficeSkypeDlg::WindowProcPONGLOGGEDOUT
SET AUDIO_OUT Realtek Voice Device
SET AUDIO_IN Realtek Voice Device
Skype API is not available.

So, whatever it is, it has the words RealTek and Skype in
the same file. It is a rather large file, to be a virus
vector. Usually those are smaller files.

The HDXTR.INF file has RTKHD_SMAPP.CopyList with SkyTel.exe in it.
Further down the file, RTKHD_SMAPP.AddReg has
%AUTORUN%,SkyTel,,"SkyTel.EXE" in it. Maybe that is
how it starts later on. (What a "registry_buster" this thing is.
Half your registry ends up being for RealTek.)

I guess RealTek is trying to enter another market of
some sort.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/press/press01-1.aspx?pressid=2006042
http://www.realtek.com.tw/search/search.aspx?search=skype

Drop them an email and ask for instructions :-)

http://www.realtek.com.tw/contact/contactX.aspx?book=ContactUs&pagename=contact1-4

Paul
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