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IBM Thinkpad 390X
- Pentium III 500Mhz
- 512MB Mushkin PC100 SDRAM
- ESS Solo-1E ES1969 Audiodrive (the culprit)
- Mandrake 9.2
- kernel 2.4.21 - with ALSA 0.9.6
I used to own a Thinkpad 390E - on which I had everything working great. I've since switched over to the 390X, which has virtually identical hardware, with an exception of the audio. I've done a fresh install, and a fresh kernel build, but I have a persistant problem with the audio.
The story goes:
With a fresh install of Mandrake, it detects the audio, and configures the snd-es1938 module for it. Finish install, start up...and the sound if funky. Everything comes through slowly, almost verging on static, and choppy, too. XMMS plays at 1/3 normal speed when I timed it.
When I went looking for the problem, the modules.conf indeed had the correct module...but things didn't seem right. There were none of the aliases that I'm used to finding, but a rather sparse few lines:
I've since futzed with modules.conf, following the documentation I could find and another topic here on LQ about the ES1969, but to no avail. Here's where things stand:
# ALSA Section
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-es1938
# module options should go here
# OSS/Free section
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-es1938
# card #1
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
above snd-es1938 snd-pcm-oss
alias /dev/dsp snd-es1938
alias /dev/mixer snd-es1938
alias /dev/sequencer snd-es1938
I have the same issue, but accidentally placed a new thread on the subject, see the post "ES1969 sound card issues on IBM 390X Thinkpad." I'd welcome any suggestions, as I'm fairly new to the hardware-issue-scene in Linux.
What does dmesg show. Does it have information about the setting the sound card clock.
You can change the clock yourself but I do not know how fast the sound card can be clocked. If you type "/sbin/modinfo snd-es1968", you should see a few options that you can set. To use these options. In /etc/modules.conf add "options snd-es1968 clock=0". When linux boots, the module snd-es1968 will try to detect and try to figure out the clock. The information might show dmesg. If you want to use more options just keep adding the parm that you see with modinfo on the same line as the "options snd-es1968" follow by a space.
On boot up, linux does detect my sound card properly. dmesg confirms this. I don't recall exactly the format in which the information is presented to me, but it does find the card and IDs it as an es1969. I checked the info of the module for it, and it's installed as an es1938. This is all fine and good, and I think this is the same setup as I had before, when my sound worked.
Yes ladies and gents, my sound did work. Then I installed a 12 gig hard drive into my 390X and updated my BIOS to the latest issued from IBM (v. 0.55). Then it all went to heck from there.
One a lighter note, if I maintain the sound card's sound issues, it'll make for one creepy sounding computer next Halloween (all those harsh static noises, etc.).
I've discovered why the sound runs so poorly on the IBM Thinkpad 390x, using the ES1969 sound card. By default, the BIOS controls the PCI bus power management, which is not suported properly by Linux and possibly the snd-es1938 module (the module for the es1969 is the snd-es1938).
To correct this issue, go into the laptop's BIOS (hit F1 when you see the initial IBM Thinkpad logo), select "Advanced Setup" from the list, then select "Power." In the new list that comes up, locate "PCI bus power management." Select DISABLE from the options for this selection. Reboot the computer, and try out your sound. If it still doesn't work, ensure you have the proper module installed (if you were like me, you might have tried out other sound card modules while experimenting for a fix.)
That's it... my ES1969 sound card works perfectly in Linux (though I have not yet tried recording)!
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