I use Simply Mepis as my distro. I have tried using alsa to set up my sound card but I havent had much luck. I wonder if anyone can help me out. Am a relative noobie to linux but I have been able to use synaptic to update alsa but when it runs, it doesnt detect my soundcard.

Hello,

What kernel version are you using?

Does Alsa completely fail to detect your hardware, or is there just no sound?

don't forget to run alsamixer after alsaconf

I am running kernel 2.6.10. What happens is Alsa gets to the point where it says "probing 4236" and it stays there...with no further response.

However, I noticed that during boot up, I now get the following message

CS-4236+ chip detected but Control Port 0X538 is not valid or is busy.

Also some little beeping sounds during booting and that wasnt so before.

Running alsamixer gives the following:

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device

thanks in advance

Anybody have any ideas PLEASEEEEEEEE

Apparently your soundcard cant be auto probed. So, you need to pass options to the driver when it is loaded.

5.3.4. CS4235/CS4236/CS4236B/CS4237B/CS4238B/CS4239 chips

According to the INSTALL file you need to supply the main port and
control ports for this card. Note that with a CS4237B card, I ended up
supplying all information (except DMA-size), otherwise the driver did
not work. So you may as well use the whole command line to insert the
driver, and not only supply snd_port and snd_cport. If you initialized
the card with the isapnp-tools, you can probably get info from the
/etc/isapnp.conf file for the following values:


snd_port - port # for CS4232 chip (PnP setup - 0x534)
snd_cport - control port # for CS4232 chip (PnP setup - 0x120)
snd_mpu_port - port # for MPU-401 UART (PnP setup - 0x300), -1 = disable
snd_fm_port - FM port # for CS4232 chip (PnP setup - 0x388), -1 = disable
snd_jport - joystick port for CS4232 chip (PnP setup - 0x200), -1 = disable
snd_irq - IRQ # for CS4232 chip (5,7,9,11,12,15)
snd_mpu_irq - IRQ # for MPU-401 UART (9,11,12,15)
snd_dma1 - first DMA # for CS4232 chip (0,1,3)
snd_dma1_size - max first DMA size in kB (4-64kB)
snd_dma2 - second DMA # for Yamaha CS4232 chip (0,1,3), -1 = disable
snd_dma2_size - max second DMA size in kB (4-64kB)



You would do a "modprobe snd-card-cs4236 snd_port=0x534
snd_cport=0x120 snd_mpu_port=-1 snd_fm_port=0x388 snd_jport=-1
snd_irq=5 snd_dma1=0 snd_dma1_size=NN snd_dma2=1 snd_dma2_size=NN" to
load the driver. (Without midi-support, see the note at Yamaha OPL-3,
and no joystick support). Notes:

· the "NN" values need to be supplied, only I do not know what would
be reasonable values.

· my CS4237B works fine without explicit dma size option.


Have a go at that and come back if you dont get it to work, letting us know what you did and what happened.
This info was all taken from here
Hope it helps and good luck

Thanks Short 101. I understand that I am supposed to save the settings you have given me into a file. Am a complete novice at this and I dont want to mess up my system by making any serious mistakes. If you could tell me what to do in plain old english, I would be grateful. My /etc/isapnp.conf file output seems to say that there is no board found

Try this from a terminal, to see if it works- as root
modprobe snd-card-cs4236 snd_port=0x534 snd_cport=0x120
you may have to do
modprobe -r snd-card-cs4236
first if you get error about it being already loaded.
If you dont get errors then try alsa-conf and alsa-mixer
Have a look
here or here should give you some ideas.

and there I was thinking that getting my wireless card to work was difficult. This is definitely rocket science. Thanks for making it look easier. I will be trying this out later today and will post my output up here.

YIPPEEEEEEEEEE. Finally have sweet music pouring out of my laptop's speakers. Thanks a million Short101 for pointing me in the right direction. This is what I addes to my modprobe.conf file. I then rebooted and kmix had all the controls up. In mepis, the modprobe.conf file is located in the /etc/modprobe.d/ folder.

How sweet,streaming music from my XP box........

alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-cs4236
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
options snd snd_major=116 snd_cards_limit=1 snd_device_mode=0660 snd_device_gid=29 snd_device_uid=0
options snd cards_limit=1
options snd-cs4236 index=0 id=CARD_0 port=0x530 cport=0x210 mpu_port=0x330 fm_port=0x388 irq=5 mpu_irq=9 dma1=1 dma2=-1 isapnp=0v


Just a note, I didnt use alsaconf at all

Excellent, glad you finally got it working. Pretty satisfying in the end too isnt it.