Sound on Panasonic CF-27 Toughbook
 

Hello all.

I've been running Slackware 9.1 on an old Panasonic CF-27 Toughbook for a while now, mostly for word processing. However, I'd now like to get the sound sorted out so I can also use it as an MP3/ogg jukebox for my lunch hour at work... :)

However... having run alsaconf, it can't detect any compatible soundcards, even when I use the option to probe for legacy cards. I bought the Toughbook second-hand - the vendor website merely mentions that it has Soundblaster-compatible sound, without any specifics. Panasonic's website is useless, as they only have info about current models. Google also has turned up a blank, as has linux-laptop.net.

Does anyone else out there have any experience of getting sound up and running on a Toughbook? Failing that, can anyone suggest any further avenues for investigation?

Thanks.

Having just installed Debian on a CF-27, I can reassure you that the sound works perfectly using OSS under 2.4.

The chip is an AD1848 (ISA device). You may have trouble getting it working if you don't go into the bios (F2 on startup) and find the setting relating to sound; by default this is set to "Auto" IIRC, set this to enable, and you will see it "hard wires" the values for IO, IRQ, etc. You shouldn't need to change them though, just set it to enable.

I just ran sndconfig and it did the job fine for OSS; personally I've never had any success in getting alsaconf to detect the card on any machine!

There is an ALSA driver for the card, I've not bothered to try it yet.

BTW, this is a useful page for linux on the CF-27

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache...art=3&ie=UTF-8

That's google's cache, I couldn't get the original page last time I tried.

HTH,

AJ

Thanks dude. I may need to do a bit of fiddling - well, a lot, by the sound of it* - but at least I have something to go on.

Toughbooks are pretty damn cool, aren't they? :D



* Ouch! No pun intended.