T41 - no sound - except low battery beep !

[kstuart]

The post-Christmas-presents period is the best time to find deals on ebay, and I found a clean lightly used for business T41 for a very low price - with the only flaw that there was no sound.
After arrival, I quickly found that the onboard sound did not work, and that a usb sound card worked fine, so I resolved to use it with that, but unplugged the sound card.
I was testing the battery and suddenly heard a loud beep announcing that the battery was low !

Is there a separate "pc speaker" on a T41 ?

Or does the low battery beep indicate that the problem is software rather than hardware ?

( I did check Device Manager, Thinkpad Configuration, and Control Panel Sound devices and everything looks fine. )

[Harryc]

Download, burn to CD, and boot up a copy of a live Linux distro, like Linux Mint 8.0. Sound would work out of the box if you do not have a hardware problem. If sounds fails there too, then it is a hardware problem. I'd guess that the system beeps do not use all of the same sound circuitry as an audio CD for example, but they do use the same speakers at least. Good question though ...

[kstuart]

Unplugging the power wire and plugging it back in, also causes an audible beep.

Muting the audio using the mute button on the keyboard then causes those power connection beeps not to be heard, and unmuting allows them to be heard again.

But nothing in windows.

[Harryc]

Download, burn to CD, and boot up a copy of a live Linux distro, like Linux Mint 8.0. Sound would work out of the box if you do not have a hardware problem. If sounds fails there too, then it is a hardware problem.

[kstuart]

Thanks Harry, I saw that the first time, and I saw it the previous times it was posted in previous years by various people.

I'm pretty sure that the Thinkpad cannot mute a sound if it is a hardware problem that is causing no sound.

[Harryc]

Cool, so then you know that you have a driver problem. Good luck.

[SMA]

Basically, the audio circuitry in a t41 consists of 2 chips.
These are the SoundMax Codec chip (AD1981B) and the Audio Amplifier chip (AN12942A).

Audio comming from Windows (eg. .wav files) must go through the Codec chip to be converted from digital to analog audio signals
which is then routed to the amplifier.
Beeps are constructed as analog signals using a kindof side effect in the timer chip and they must be going directly to the amplifier.

Seems your amplifier chip is fine, and I see nothing strange about the mute button being able to mute the amplifier.
Your problem must be with the Codec chip or its driver.

Take Harryc's advise or try installing the latest audio driver from Lenovo.
If that does not help, then either you must live without audio, use usb audio, have the AD1981B chip replaced or replace the motherboard.

[kstuart]

Thanks SMA for the info regarding the analog audio, that's helpful.