Hey there. I'm a noob, and am having trouble getting my soundcard to work. It's onboard, and I don't know the exact model number, but the chip inside reads

"CRYSTAL
CS4235-JQ
ZTAGCE 9948"

I asume it's talking about Crystal Audio. I've downloaded and compiled ALSA, I think. I followed the instructions on this site: http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/softinstall.html. I hope it was right. I typed alsaconf at the terminal (as root), both in root and in the directory where alsa.conf was, /usr/share/alsa, Or am I doing this wrong? is alsaconf not the same as alsa.conf? Oh well. I've looked at some other posts, and they said to edit some files... I'd rather do it once someone has taken a look. Thanks for your patience. BTW, here's the output from the dmesg command:

[bennett@localhost bennett]$ dmesg
Linux version 2.6.5-1.358 (bhcompile@bugs.build.redhat.com) (gcc version 3.3.3 20040412 (Red Hat Linux 3.3.3-7)) #1 Sat May 8 09:04:50 EDT 2004
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f800 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009f800 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000e6c00 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000040fd800 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 00000000040fd800 - 00000000040ff800 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 00000000040ff800 - 00000000040ffc00 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 00000000040ffc00 - 0000000010000000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fffe6c00 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
0MB HIGHMEM available.
256MB LOWMEM available.
zapping low mappings.
On node 0 totalpages: 65536
DMA zone: 4096 pages, LIFO batch:1
Normal zone: 61440 pages, LIFO batch:15
HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
DMI 2.1 present.
ACPI disabled because your bios is from 1999 and too old
You can enable it with acpi=force
Built 1 zonelists
Kernel command line: ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
mapped 4G/4G trampoline to ffff3000.
Initializing CPU#0
CPU 0 irqstacks, hard=02345000 soft=02344000
PID hash table entries: 2048 (order 11: 16384 bytes)
Detected 547.633 MHz processor.
Using tsc for high-res timesource
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Memory: 256468k/262144k available (1540k kernel code, 4948k reserved, 599k data, 144k init, 0k highmem)
Calibrating delay loop... 1077.24 BogoMIPS
Security Scaffold v1.0.0 initialized
SELinux: Initializing.
SELinux: Starting in permissive mode
There is already a security framework initialized, register_security failed.
Failure registering capabilities with the kernel
selinux_register_security: Registering secondary module capability
Capability LSM initialized
Dentry cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
CPU: After generic identify, caps: 0383f9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: After vendor identify, caps: 0383f9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: L1 I cache: 16K, L1 D cache: 16K
CPU: L2 cache: 512K
CPU: After all inits, caps: 0383f1ff 00000000 00000000 00000040
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPU: Intel Pentium III (Katmai) stepping 03
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
NET: Registered protocol family 16
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfd9a3, last bus=1
PCI: Using configuration type 1
mtrr: v2.0 (20020519)
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20040326
ACPI: Interpreter disabled.
Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
usbcore: registered new driver usbfs
usbcore: registered new driver hub
ACPI: ACPI tables contain no PCI IRQ routing entries
PCI: Invalid ACPI-PCI IRQ routing table
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Using IRQ router PIIX/ICH [8086/7110] at 0000:00:07.0
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.16ac)
audit: initializing netlink socket (disabled)
audit(1098878825.943:0): initialized
Total HugeTLB memory allocated, 0
VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
SELinux: Registering netfilter hooks
Initializing Cryptographic API
Limiting direct PCI/PCI transfers.
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: Card 'CS4235 CODEC'
isapnp: 1 Plug & Play card detected total
Real Time Clock Driver v1.12
Linux agpgart interface v0.100 (c) Dave Jones
agpgart: Detected an Intel 440BX Chipset.
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 204M
agpgart: AGP aperture is 64M @ 0xf4000000
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 8 ports, IRQ sharing enabled
ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 16384K size 1024 blocksize
divert: not allocating divert_blk for non-ethernet device lo
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
PIIX4: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:07.1
PIIX4: chipset revision 1
PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0x1000-0x1007, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0x1008-0x100f, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddio
hda: QUANTUM FIREBALL CR4.3A, ATA DISK drive
Using cfq io scheduler
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
hdc: CRD-8483B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: 8418816 sectors (4310 MB) w/418KiB Cache, CHS=14848/9/63, UDMA(33)
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3
hdc: ATAPI 48X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, UDMA(33)
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
usbcore: registered new driver hiddev
usbcore: registered new driver hid
drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.0:USB HID core driver
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
input: ImPS/2 Logitech Wheel Mouse on isa0060/serio1
serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard on isa0060/serio0
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP: routing cache hash table of 2048 buckets, 16Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 32768)
Initializing IPsec netlink socket
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
checking if image is initramfs...it isn't (no cpio magic); looks like an initrd
Freeing initrd memory: 186k freed
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 144k freed
SELinux: Disabled at runtime.
SELinux: Unregistering netfilter hooks
NET: Registered protocol family 10
Disabled Privacy Extensions on device 022db720(lo)
IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling driver
divert: not allocating divert_blk for non-ethernet device sit0
[drm] Initialized r128 2.5.0 20030725 on minor 0
agpgart: Found an AGP 1.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode
USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v2.2
PCI: Enabling device 0000:00:07.2 (0004 -> 0005)
PCI: Found IRQ 9 for device 0000:00:07.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 9 with 0000:00:0e.0
uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: UHCI Host Controller
uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: irq 9, io base 00001020
uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
EXT3 FS on hda2, internal journal
device-mapper: 4.1.0-ioctl (2003-12-10) initialised: dm@uk.sistina.com
cdrom: open failed.
Adding 522104k swap on /dev/hda3. Priority:-1 extents:1
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS on hda1, internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
IA-32 Microcode Update Driver: v1.13 <tigran@veritas.com>
microcode: CPU0 updated from revision 0x5 to 0xe, date = 09101999
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778) [PCSPP,TRISTATE]
parport0: irq 7 detected
SCSI subsystem initialized
inserting floppy driver for 2.6.5-1.358
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
PCI: Found IRQ 9 for device 0000:00:0e.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 9 with 0000:00:07.2
3c59x: Donald Becker and others. www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
0000:00:0e.0: 3Com PCI 3c905B Cyclone 100baseTx at 0x1080. Vers LK1.1.19
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0
divert: freeing divert_blk for eth0
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
PCI: Found IRQ 9 for device 0000:00:0e.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 9 with 0000:00:07.2
3c59x: Donald Becker and others. www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
0000:00:0e.0: 3Com PCI 3c905B Cyclone 100baseTx at 0x1080. Vers LK1.1.19
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778) [PCSPP,TRISTATE]
parport0: irq 7 detected
lp0: using parport0 (polling).
lp0: console ready
agpgart: Found an AGP 1.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Found an AGP 1.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Found an AGP 1.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Found an AGP 1.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Found an AGP 1.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode


Any suggestions?

All help is appreciated.

If you do "lspci" it'll show you which soundcard you have.

If you run alsaconf a program should start that asks you some things and then goes on finding hardware. If it doesn't happen I don't think the package is installed right.

BTW the site you gave looked pretty general to me. In the alsa wiki it's explained exactly how you should install it to make it work.

The card has been found, it's an isa card.

isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: Card 'CS4235 CODEC'
isapnp: 1 Plug & Play card detected total

I suspect either something is amiss with your alsa install or the database hasn't been updated. Did you get any errors when trying to run alsaconf?
good luck.

Allright, as far as alsaconf goes, I get:
bash: alsaconf: command not found

Am I supposed to be in a certain directory when I run it?

And the alsa wiki... what in the world is a wiki? LOL, such a nOOb.

Thanks for all the help so far!

The alsaconf command has to be run as root or su -, root's environment. If it's still not working, try modprobing the module.

modprobe snd-cs4236

I'm certain we should be able to get this card up and going.
good luck.

Does this make any sense???

[bennett@localhost bennett]$ su
Password:
[root@localhost bennett]# alsaconf
bash: alsaconf: command not found
[root@localhost bennett]# lspci
bash: lspci: command not found
[root@localhost bennett]# cd ..
[root@localhost home]# cd ..
[root@localhost /]# alsaconf
bash: alsaconf: command not found
[root@localhost /]# modprobe snd-cs4236
bash: modprobe: command not found
[root@localhost /]#

Try su - instead of su.
good luck.

Allright! It worked! ... but why? What's the difference between "su" and "su -" ??? Also, when I open up the volume control, there are two tabs, "CS4235 [Audio Mixer (OSS)]" and "CS4235 [Alsa Mixer]"... Why did it make two, and what are they? What does it mean?

If I am explaining this correctly, su is the root user without root's environment, while su - is the root user with root's environment.

Most likely one is for oss emulation, if you choose to use that. Either will probably work with most applications.
good luck.