Thinkpad 390X sound problem

[Darren Critchley]

Mike Bate wrote:

> Darren Critchley wrote:
> on (former) thread: Re: Live RC2, Thinkpad 390X problems
>
> Thanks for your various thoughts so far. I'm narrowing my quest to
> sorting out problems with the Warty full install for now, perhaps
> fiddle with the Live CD more later.
>
>> I'm running ubuntu on a 390X.
>
>
> OK! - tho there are many variants of the 390X. I've got the 2626-FOU,
> (Celeron 400) ESS Solo-1 sound (ES1938/1969). And yours?? 

Same model number 2626-F0U which means that everything should be 
identical, usually a single change in RAM, processor or other features 
would change the last three letters/digits in the FRU number. IBM is 
pretty exacting about this, I work for a business partner and have been 
dealing with them for years.
So my configuration is Celeron 400, 4 gig harddrive, originally 64 megs 
of RAM, now it is 192 megs of ram. I did not bother configuring the 
modem. For Network cards I have a 3Com cardbus 10/100 ethernet and I 
also have a Dlink DWL-650+ (which works great if you compile your own 
kernel module). The sound card is the same ES1969 Solo1 sound, the modem 
shows as a 56K winmodem, however I have not used it.

One thing to note about sound, when I added your pnpbios=off to the 
kernel parameters, I no longer get a beep from the terminal programs, 
all other sounds seem unaffected and I am still able to play MP3's as well.

>>> Odd IRQ problem - also present with installed Warty, and Knoppix
>>>  3.6 live cd, so is likely a Thinkpad 390X issue, not just 
>>> Warty/Live. Sound is badly garbled and slooooow, *unless* either
>>>  the pcmcia nic (rtl 8139 based) or wireless card (dlink g650)
>>> are plugged in, then sound works normally. Plugging in a
>>> different pcmcia card (Xircom combo nic/modem) does not cure
>>> sound. If anyone has any ideas on a fix or workaround here, I'd
>>> be pleased to try.
>>
>> Sound is fine with my unit, however, I have never booted with no 
>> cards inserted, there is usually 3com card in there and also a Dlink 
>> 650+.
>
> Would you try booting with your pcmcia cards removed and see if the
> sound is still normal? Catch here is both my nic or wireless cards 
> physically block the use my modem in 2nd pcmcia slot. There is also an 
> onboard winmodem, Lucent, which I know can be made to work under Linux 
> (works with Mepis live cd), so that is On The List. 

Oh WOW! without any cards in the PCMCIA slot, the sound is totally 
screwed up and slow!
Now here is the kicker, insert my wireless and no difference (I think 
that is due to the highly experimental acx100 driver), but as soon as I 
plug my 3Com Cardbus in, the sound returns to normal immediately. Now 
that is truly strange. Any ideas from anyone out there?
And you know, Ubuntu is the first linux that I have tried on the 
thinkpad that the sound actually worked. So far I have tried Redhat 8, 
Xandros, and Linspire and none of them got sound going properly.

>
> My sound seems to associate with PCI device 2, and I've tried
> various combinations of IRQ's with the 4 PCI devices, no improvement.
> The bios default is IRQ5, so back to that now. "lspci -v" with and 
> without the nic is identical, except for the nic entry. I still 
> think/hope that a fix for this is a dozen keystrokes away... Just 
> downloaded kernel-parameters.txt, interesting stuff. 

Now I should point out that like most other PC's I have, hardware that 
is not going to be used is disabled. ie) Serial/parallel, etc. I have a 
network printer so I don't need the parallel port. What on earth would 
you use a serial port for these days with so many USB devices, etc. So 
here is how I have set up my bios:

Serial Port: Disabled
Infared: Disabled
Modem for Legacy OS: Disabled
Parallel Port: Disabled
    Mode: Bi-directional

As for PCI (not that I have ever touched these)
1st [11]
2nd [5]
3rd [11]
4th [11]

Try turning some of the unused stuff off, it frees up interrupts and 
there is a good chance it will fix your problems.

>> Dlink 650+
>
> Interesting, as my next project will likely be getting my Dlink G650
> to work. Oops, I see yours is a TI chipset, mine is Atheros. 

Yes, I was fortunate in this that the acx100 driver actually works. (out 
of the box with the 386 compiled kernel)

>>> Power off on shutdown not working, it just reboots
>>
>> Add acpi=force to the kernel parameters at boot and that will fix the 
>> power down problem. It will also get your battery indicator working 
>> properly too.
>
> Great, that worked on both of those issues.
>
>>> Message: PnPBIOS: Unknown tag '0x82', length '25' PCI: Address space 
>>> collision on region 8 of bridge ..... appears during first part of 
>>> boot, adding pnpbios=off eliminates the message, but perhaps this is 
>>> a clue to the other problems?
>>
>>
>> I have that same error, I will give your solution a try 
>
Message is gone now, but as noted, sound in terminal is no longer 
functional, all other desktop sounds work fine

>>
> I've found that if "pci=noacpi" is also added, that causes the error
> message to appear again.
>

I found adding pci-noacpi did nothing at all for us. I found the force 
worked because Linux noted the bios date is 1999 and figured our bios 
was too old to have the acpi. The force fixes quite a few things and 
dmesg will show you the difference.

Hope that gets you going now.

Darren