Alsa and CS4237 sound card

[tw]

Ive read plenty of posts about alsa with this sound card, but I cant seem to find anything useful. Im trying to get sound working on a thinkpad 600, with a CS4237B chip, which is supposed to worth with both alsa and OSS.

Ive tried several things, with a knoppix live cd, i use the cheatcode "knoppix alsa",
which says:
"Preparing modules for alsa...
Building card database"
then:
"Soundcard = driver(alsa)" or something.
while booting.

The sound then doesnt work...

I also tried this:

root@ttyp0[init.d]# cd /etc/init.d/
root@ttyp0[init.d]# ./alsa-autoconfig
Preparing modules for alsa...
root@ttyp0[init.d]#

Still nothing.

when I run sndconfig, it wont detect the card. So I manually select the cs423x driver, and i get... "Segmentation fault", not fun.

I've done a hd install for mini knoppix (it supports my wireless card), I then apt-got alsa-base and utils.

When I run alsaconf, it wont detect the card. Ive tried adding things to modutils, or modconf, as it said on some tutorial. It says "modules not installed". I cant get these modules either because theres none for kernel 2.4.24-xfs.

Can I update (or downdate if needed) my kernel and install the alsa modules, and if so, can someone guide me through it? Ive found a site about compiling custom alsa kernels, followed it for a few hours before deciding its waaay over my head.

Ive also tried following the tut on the alsa website, but thats given me plenty of errors.

Has anyone had these problems before? Ive looked through a lot of forums and tutorials and they either fixed it with alsaconf, or never got a reply. Im quite new to linux, and ive been more than patient with alsa but I dont seem to be going anywhere. Im about to crawl back to windows...

One last thing Ive heard with the thinkpad 600 is the "quick boot" option in the bios, that seems to disable pnp cards. Ive disabled it, but ill have another look now.

[TimWhite]

Are you sure it's a CS4237?
My Thinkpad600 uses the CS4232 driver.
I've not bothered with ALSA, as the OSS driver is fine.

You need to modprobe it with the following options


modprobe cs4232 io=0x530 irq=5 dma=1 dma2=0 mpuio=0x330 mpuirq=5 synthio=-1 synthirq=-1
modprobe opl3 io=0x388


HTH

[tw]

Either cs4232 or cs4236 works for cs4237.

"modprobe op13 0x388" gives me the error:
modprobe: Cant locate module op13

I thought u had to pay for the OSS drivers?

[TimWhite]

It's Oh Pea El three

It's only needed for midi.

[tw]

Working perfect, thx m8 :D

It even works when I reboot.

[tw]

I was originally using miniknoppix, but with knoppix hdinstall im gettin the same problems you posted about earlier.

The modprobe no longer works after a reboot, but it does bring some errors while booting. Did you ever find a solution to ur post earlier?

What was ur temporary solution, are you having any problems with it?

[TimWhite]

My 'temporary' solutions was to create a bash script to rmmod and reload the modules correctly prior to the GUI starting.
The script was:


#!/bin/bash
rmmod cs4232
rmmod ad1848
rmmod uart401
rmmod opl3
modprobe cs4232 io=0x530 irq=5 dma=1 dma2=0 mpuio=0x330 mpuirq=5 synthirq=-1 synthio=-1
modprobe opl3 io=0x388

I load this script by calling it from:


/etc/rc5.d/S98soundscript
which is a symbolic link to the script saved as:
/etc/init.d/soundscript

HTH