T21, openSUSE and CS46xx sound - just won't work

[marcdw]

T21 (2647-4BU), openSUSE 10.2

I scoured the web last week reading everything I could but I just
can't find a way to get the sound working.
The best I get is some kind of long droning noise.

Dmesg will show either a "failure waiting for FIFO command to
complete" or an error regarding possible DMA/IRQ problem.

Tried a few suggestions such as disabling PCI Bus Management
in the BIOS's Power section; passing the kernel options such as
pci=noacpi or no acpi in general. Maybe a few other things.

In the past with Solaris and one of the BSDs on the desktop if
all failed with provided sound drivers I resort to 4Front's OSS
stuff.

I still have a few more things to check out (in Windows right now).
With my luck I might be missing something simple.

Also, I read but can't find again something about reconfiguring
the kernel and enabling a CS46xx DSP (...NEW_DSP?) option.
I don't yet have the kernel sources installed but I will since I need
those in place anyway if I resort to 4Front's sound package.

Marc

[whizkid]

I don't have a T21 and haven't used SuSE in many years.

But, I have used Fedora on a 600X which has the same or similar sound chip. Uses the same driver anyway.

On a few versions of Fedora, I had to add acpi=noirq to the kernel parameters to get both sound and the CardBus slots to work. If you try that, let me know if it worked.

I'd also suggest you try the Ubuntu LiveCD. It should play a welcome sound as it starts. If that doesn't work, sound may be disabled somehow. Check the BIOS?

[marcdw]

The acpi=noirq didn't work and there's no sound-related
settings in the BIOS.

That said, sound works now. After checking and rechecking
the BIOS and having nothing seem useful I decided to just
reload the default settings. Did that and had a look around to
see what was different. Not much really except under
Config --> PCI. PCI IRQ settings were set to Automatic but
the reloaded defaults put them all at IRQ 11.

Booted back into Linux and figured nothing changed until I heard
a loud beep when I was in Window Maker. A few sound tests
worked just fine.
Logged into KDE later and heard musc at startup, too.
Making sure it's not a fluke I rebooted and sound still worked.
Strangely though, back in Windows the volume is louder and
can't be controlled. No amount of mixer fiddling will change
anything. Maybe it'll right itself after a cold boot.

Marc

[hyperq]

I put Ubuntu 7.10 on my old T21, everything just worked. Pretty much maintenance free. I installed NFS, SSH, and FTP servers on it and use it to backup/test/service other computers I have. I love it. It is rock stable.

Try Ubuntu or Kubuntu. Hassle free OS.

[leasure98]

hyperq:

I get the error message, too when resuming from suspend on a T20 with Mandriva 2008.1.
Does suspend to disk and/or ram work for you with Ubu?