[Solved] ALSA detects Macbook Pro's HDMI output but not sound card

[bluestlizard]

I just installed Mint 18.3 XFCE Edition on a MacBook Pro 8,1. The sound isn't working, and it seems that Linux detects the sound hardware, but ALSA doesn't.

When I try to run alsamixer, I get this error:

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cannot open mixer: No such file or directory

However, alsamixergui seems to work fine.

lspci lists the device:

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00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)

As does inxi -Fxz:

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Audio:     Card Intel 6 Series/C200 Series Family High Definition Audio Controller
           driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.10.0-42-generic

However, aplay -l gets me these results:

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**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Likewise, pavucontrol only lists "HDMI / DisplayPort (unplugged)" as a sound device.

Is there something I need to do to add the soundcard? Is alsamixer's failure to load somehow related?

[bluestlizard]

It turns out the sound card died at the same time I installed Linux. I put the original hard drive back in and OS X doesn't recognize the device at all, while Linux could still recognize the chipset.