Dell SK-8135 keyboard not working during boot (POST, BIOS, GRUB) on OptiPlex 990

Just a quick note to anyone out there confused out of their mind if their Dell keyboard isn’t working with their computer during boot: there is some incompatibility between the OptiPlex 990 and the Dell SK-8135 keyboard.  I’m using the A06 BIOS, which is latest at the time of writing.

The result of this is that you cannot use the keyboard during boot, so not within POST, not to …

in Hardware · Thu 20 October 2011

Ubuntu: Crackling audio noises on a Dell M1530 (or HDA cards)

The problem I found (so did everyone else) when updating to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic was static/popping noises when your sound card is silent (aka goes into power-save mode). It applies to my Dell XPS M1530 laptop’s on-board sound and probably to the same chipset elsewhere.

The fix couldn’t be simpler! Simply edit this file (as root):

/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

and comment out the last line. Then, restart ALSA to save you having to do a reboot to check it worked:

sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils stop sudo alsa force-reload sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils …

in Linux · Sat 16 January 2010