Sounds like teen ... er, Linux on a Thinkpad

[unixronin]

Every document we've found on running Linux on the Thinkpad 600E says that ALSA sound works best, and you should use the CS4236 driver.  ALSA's own alsaconf tool says, "Aha, you have a Thinkpad 600, we detected a CS4610 chip, but even though we detected it as a CS4610 you should use the CS4236 driver."

All this information would be a bit more relevant if ALSA HAD a CS4236 driver ... it appears current versions, both within the kernel and as a separate download, don't contain one.  Neither do the kernel OSS drivers.

The commercial OSS package from 4Front Technologies does, and it's now completely free for home/personal use so long as you refresh it every 4 months.  If that is too much hassle, you have the option of buying a "permanent"¹ license for $50.  The latest version, OSS 4.0, is offered only for 2.6 kernels, however, and only as an RPM or a Debian package.

Update:  4Front says that when the final release version of OSS 4.0 ships next week, there will be a .tgz package.  In the meantime, I made one from the rpm using alien.

[1]  The license never expires, but allows support for one year and licensed upgrades to new versions for 2 years.  By comparison, I don't really see a refresh every four months as a problem.

Comments

[tomatoe333.livejournal.com]

IIRC, the ALSA CS4236 driver is the same as the CS4231/4232 driver. I can double-check when I get home, since I have a machine with a CS4236 chipset on the motherboard.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That driver doesn't appear to be present either. No problem though, I'll just use OSS/Linux.

more info

[tomatoe333.livejournal.com]

Jumping through a few hoops (like 4), I can log into my machine at home

Looks like the correct sound module for ALSA in the 2.6.x kernels is called snd_cs4236. There are 20 or so other modules that are dependencies for this one.

I'm not sure of the kernel configure magic to put that in, since I'm running a precompiled fedora kernel.

Machine is a Dell Precision Workstation 410, running Fedora Core 5. It has a real CS4236 chipset built into the motherboard, which works well with ALSA sound.

Re: more info

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

And that's the module I tried to configure. But it's not even offered as an option, and isn't present in the standalone alsa-drivers package either.

Re: more info

[midiamin.livejournal.com]

In modules.conf, I have the following bits that are specific to sound in my 600:

alias snd-card-0 snd-cs4236
options snd-cs4236 port=0x530 cport=0x538 mpu_port=-1 fm_port=0x388 irq=5 dma1=1 dma2=0 isapnp=0

If you have the kernel module built (it's under sound->alsa->ISA devices, if you didn't see it), that alias should cause the module to be selected/loaded when you start alsa (Gentoo's startup is in /etc/init.d/alsasound). If not, make sure you've got the other generic sound aliases in there as well.

Re: more info

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm...... maybe the problem is I was looking for it under PCI, not ISA.

I'll have to check again.

Damn. Yeah, there it is. :)

[tww1fa]

In my kernel it's in sound/isa/cs423x - it's activated through Device Drivers->Sound->Advanced Linux Sound Architecture->ISA Devices->Generic Cirrus Logic CS4236+ driver and the module is created as kernel/sound/isa/cs423x/snd-cs4236.ko under my modules dir.

[tww1fa]

Aaaand... I'm late to the post.