Alex;

I'm guessing that chuck must try to query all present devices, which
is why it failed every time, even when I specified a different device.
How's that for a rare bug!


Could be, yes. I think it's generally good practice to turn off unused devices in the BIOS, especially when dealing with a more complicated setup like yours, or with somewhat broken devices. For all we know it might have been a IRQ conflict or some such issue. Surprising that ALSA itself didn't balk at the situation, really.

End good all good,
Kas.